Lust Over Logic: Story of a Detective and the God of Mischief
by night-waves
Summary: Two girls move to England, only to have their lives turned upside down. Sara is taken by two evil masterminds, Loki and Moriarty, who need to extract information from her. Laurel is left to piece together the puzzle of why her friend was stolen away, thankfully Sherlock Holmes is there to offer assistance. MATURE CONTENT! GRAPHIC CONTENT! RATING: MA
1. Chapter 1

Laurel walked down the sidewalk, shoving her hands into her jacket pockets. Stupid rain, she thought to herself as she shrugged deeper into the coats collar, trying to stay as dry as possible. Cars sped by on the puddle ridden street, splashing dirty water onto the sidewalk. It had been raining for days. The clouds loomed over the entire city, endlessly pouring rain down onto the busy cobble stone streets.  
Laurel had spent all of her money moving to another country with her friend and what happens? Nothing. The sights she had wanted to see had to wait, due to constant cold rainfall. The one night she was supposed to go out and have fun, to celebrate her new life with her friend, had completely fallen through. Where the hell was Sara? The two were supposed to meet by the statue in Piccadilly Circus, but Sara hadn't shown up; then when the downpour started, after waiting over an hour, Laurel left to find shelter and try to dry off.

She pushed against a heavy glass door that lead into a small, yet very crowded tea house. The lighting was dim, the tables and chairs were all antique and mismatched.

"Sit where ever you'd like." A small voice cried out from the bar.

Laurel looked over and saw a scared looking old man. He was thin with balding white hair, a large nose, mouth painted in a deep frown and two dark blue eyes that were magnified by an odd octangular shape of glasses. She looked around the floor and saw only the one table by the door left empty. It was also conveniently right next to the window, so that she could keep an eye out for her friend. Laurel sat down, making herself comfortable, taking off her wet jacket and hanging it on the back of the chair. She picked up her purse and dug through it, looking for the cell phone she was positive she'd left back at the flat. Damn it! Where was Sara?! Had she gotten lost? The books store was only a short bus ride away from the apartment, there was no way she could've gotten lost...but then again it was Sara. She put her purse down with a sigh, debating whether to go back out into the rain and look for her friend, or back to the flat—maybe she had forgotten about the plans?

"Cup of tea, miss?"

Laurel looked up at the thin man who had been behind the counter, to find that he was standing in front of her, holding out a small china cup of tea. "Er...Sure. How much?" She asked, taking the tea from the man.

"It's on the house. It's a new blend I've just brewed, so I'm handing out free samples to everyone." He explained, and turned to the next table, handing them the same cups off of his brown tray.  
Laurel shrugged, who would say no to free tea; especially on a night like this? She held the cup up to her lips, blowing on the hot liquid. Just as she was about to take a tentative sip a man in a grey coat and a billowing purple scarf burst in through the doors, causing a cold chill to sweep throughout the tea house. "STOP! DO NOT DRINK THE TEA!" The man cried, as he took several steps deeper into the store. Now that he was under the light Laurel could see his wavy black hair, pensive intense eyes, which seemed to be raking across every face in the tea house, his thick lips and sharp cheek bones. He slowly removed his gloves and announced, "Your tea has been poisoned."

Gasps erupted from everyone in the cafe. No one knew what to think or what to do. Laurel felt her heart beating a mile a minute. Was this actually happening? Did this happen often? Was this a British thing? Dinner theater perhaps? There's no way someone would actually poison tea. She looked questioningly at the cup in her hands and slowly sniffed the liquid, trying to detect any hint of odor that might be harmful.

"I'd listen to him."

Laurel looked up to see another man; this one was shorter and blond. He had a kind face, but worry etched throughout. He smiled and pointed to the seat across from her. "May I?" He asked "I've been chasing after him for the last ten hours and could do with a bit of a rest."

"Help yourself." Laurel nodded; too shocked to really process everything that was happening.

"You might want to watch this." The blond man said, "This is the good part." He cleared his throat and called out to the other man, "Sherlock, how can you be so sure it's this man?"

The dark haired man, who'd been called Sherlock, turned towards his friend and rolled his eyes, "Isn't it obvious?" he looked around the room at all the confused faces, "Of course it isn't, to all you _normal_ people." He said with disdain.

"Don't take offence." The blond man whispered to Laurel, "That's how he refers to everyone who's part of the human race."

"The other day when the police had found the flower vendor, who'd been living on the streets, dead, they thought that it would be best to find out who the DNA of the blood left on her skin, along the stretch marks from where she'd been strangled, belonged to." Sherlock started his explanation. "I knew that seeing as how the police and scientists in this country couldn't find their way out of a box, I thought to look into the traces of pink specks that were found smudged into her bruises. I knew immediately that..." Sherlock stopped his story and quickly dove down behind the bar, coming up, holding the old thin man face down against the counter. "This man was her killer. He murdered her because she saw him mixing the poison into the tea; she knew he was planning on killing his customers and making it look like a mass suicide. He had to kill her or else he would've been discovered."

"How did you get from finding pink specks to knowing he did it?" The blond man asked, clearly just as confused as the rest of the crowd.

Sherlock once again rolled his eyes. He let out a deep sigh and said "The pink specks were paint chips. A water based acrylic paint that is found only in china and Taiwan. That shade of fuchsia is very rare in this part of the country and I've only seen it on one particular item. One particular item that would have to be hand crafted and hand painted, all by one single man. This man, who makes and paints his own personal tea cups."

The sounds of sirens were heard in the distance, coming closer and closer. Laurel tore her gaze away from Sherlock and looked at her tea cup, and at the surrounding cups. He was right. They were all the same colour of purple pink. She slowly put the cup down and pulled some hand sanitizer out of her pocket, hoping that it could possibly sanitize potential poison.

"So now you're a tea cup expert?" The blond man asked, pushing himself up from his chair.

Sherlock twisted the thin mans arm and began to lead him towards the doors, where the police cars had now gathered, awaiting their suspect. "Don't be silly John, I don't have time to research fine china—however is an avid collector."

The blond man, who Laurel now knew was named John just looked at the ground, shook his head and chuckled. "Of course. Yes, I should've know." He looked down at Laurel as Sherlock handed the man off to the police. "Sorry to ruin your evening." John said, turning back to Laurel and offering his hand. "My name is John Watson, and that mildly scary man over there is Sherlock Homes, he has a great talent."

"Solving mysteries?" Laurel guessed.

"Ruining evenings." John corrected. "Beg my pardon, but your accent, are you from America?"

Laurel scoffed, "I think not, I'm Canadian." She smiled and held out her hand, "Laurel Rice, It's nice to meet you."

John shook her hand. "Likewise. So what brings you out on such a miserable night? Had I not been trying to solve a murder I assure you I'd be inside blogging or something to that extent." He said, mimicking typing with only his two index fingers.

Laurel stood and put her jacket on. "I was supposed to meet my friend, Sara. We both just moved here and were going to go out, but she never showed up."

"Oh?" John questioned.

"She went out to a used book store not far from our place and I haven't seen her since. She should've been back by now, hours ago, actually." She pulled her jacket, which was still heavy and wet, from the chair and began to put it on. "Actually maybe I should go back to our place to see if she's there."

"Is she usually punctual?" John asked.

Laurel nodded, "The girl is never late. I'm actually really worried."

John held up his finger, indicating for her to stay where she was. "Sherlock!" He called over his shoulder.

"Hmm." A grunt was the only answer John received as Sherlock wrote out his own statement of what had happened that night, having given up on the policeman who'd been in charge of writing it.

"There's a woman here whose friend seems to have gone missing. I thought maybe we could—"

"Has she reported to the proper authorities that there is a missing person?" Sherlock asked, as he continued to scribble onto the piece of official paper.

John looked annoyed, "No, she hasn't the girl has only been missing for a few hours."

"Has she checked her flat? Perhaps she fell asleep, or other such nonsense that females do."

"Sherlock, can we please just help her, she isn't from around here and I think—"

"John!" Sherlock cut him off angrily. He threw the papers at a young scared looking officer. "We do not do cases that make me bored. Just simply talking about this is boring me. I am bored. BORED!" He shifted his body towards Laurel, keeping his eyes on the floor, clearly very exasperated by the entire event. "I'm sorry miss but I cannot—"He looked up at her and his voice failed. His eyes quickly darted around her features. Dirty blond hair, nearly soaked with rain. Smooth face, big eyes, filled with worry, full lips and ample breast and curves to go with her lovely features. "I cannot promise that we will find her by the nights end." He finished his sentence, trying to regain his composure.

"Uh, what?" John asked, clearly confused.

"Let's go to her flat first, to check if her friend was or is there, if not we will retrace her steps." Sherlock announced, throwing his scarf around his shoulders. "Lestrade, are we done here?"

"What?" The officer in charge looked up from a talk he'd been having with one of his officers. "No! I need you to finish the statement and I need 's statement."

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "I wrote down my statement, that's truly the only one that matters. You have more than enough witnesses here that will give you a statement, so you have no need for John, or I or..." He looked at Laurel, and rolled his wrist around in the air.

"Laurel Rice." John informed, on her behalf.

"or Laurel Rice, to give you our statement, it's simply a waste of our time when there is so much more to do." He finished, as he began to herd both Laurel and John out of the tea house.

"You have other things to do?" A snide voice crept out from a group of police. "I highly doubt that."

"Shut it Anderson!" Sherlock snapped as he walked past the cop cars. "Now, where do you live?" he asked turning to Laurel.

"Not far." She said. "Just down this way."

As the three made their way through the still miserable rain, John made small talk whilst Sherlock listened, interjecting here and there with questions of his own regarding Sara.

"So, Laurel," John asked, weaving through a series of puddles in the cobblestones, "What inspired you and this friend of yours to move from Canada to England? Bit of a long way to go." He frowned slightly as he made a misstep, soaking one of his feet to the ankle.

"Well, actually, we had no really great reason other than that we felt like it, if you can believe that. About a year ago I got a job in a hospital in the small town I'm from, so I had to move away from the city and Sara, so naturally we missed each other madly since we're best friends. It turned out that my new job was great, but my new boss was a vindictive jerk, so after about a year of telling her how unhappy I was and us having dinner together over Skype too often, she told me she had managed to get a job in London and that I was coming with her. And that was that, I guess. I gave my two weeks notice, got all packed up, and here we are in England. It's been a fun adventure so far, until now. Like I said, Sara is never, ever late."

Sherlock interjected, thrusting himself between John and Laurel, who had been walking slightly ahead of him. Laurel noticed immediately how tall he was; always liked tall men, she mused to herself.

"Laurel, is Sara a librarian of some sort? Does she work with books?"

"Wow, yeah, she does. How did you figure that out?"

"I didn't 'figure' it out, I observed it. I'll explain it later, if I must. Right now I believe that time is running out for our Sara. Was she at the Central location?"

"Yes, that's where her new placement is. She's a library tech, they've got her working in their archives and a little bit out front just to get started. Why, is something going on at that location today?"

"Not something... someone. Someone I thought we'd dealt with already."

John suddenly looked alarmed, disregarding his puddle-jumping and walking straight through a huge pool of water. "Sherlock, come on now, you don't mean he's back? You saw him, saw him dead on the roof. He shot himself in front of you!"

"Yes, John, but as may have noticed before, the man is never what, whom, or where he seems. We know that Richard Brook is dead, but what of his creator?"

Laurel looked confused, but decided to hide her ignorance of the situation by fumbling around in her gigantic purse for her keys. "Uhm, we're here, actually. This is our flat, I apologize in advance for the mess..."

John and Sherlock both chuckled as she was turning the key in the lock. Sherlock breezed through the door in front of her, startling her as he walked directly towards their flat without her having said which one was hers. "Oh, never fear, I'm sure your mess is nothing compared to mine. John is forever trying to convince me to stop leaving specimens in the fridge, but where else would I put them?"

"Severed heads are not to be left next to the jam and the takeaway cartons, if you ask me," John retorted, "and anyways, didn't I say I'd get you a minifridge for that sort of stuff?"

Sherlock pulled off his scarf and began to unbutton his long elegant coat in one smooth motion. Laurel was entranced for a moment by his graceful hands, and then remembered that they needed her to open the flat. "I um, I keep saying apartment to most people when I say where I live, I have to get used to the lingo over here." She opened the door wide, waiting for Sherlock to breeze in ahead of her once again. He seemed pleased that she'd done so, and took advantage, gliding into the flat with his coat and scarf over one forearm. John smiled at her and followed her in. Pippin, Sara's cat, immediately began twining herself in Sherlock's long legs, meowing for attention. Laurel went to the kitchen automatically to grab the insistent cat a treat; she'd learned long ago it was the only surefire way to get her out from underfoot.

John was following Sherlock as he wandered about the small flat, picking up books, tea mugs, hair clips, and any small objects to hand, and putting them down again after a short but thorough inspection. "Sherlock. Are you absolutely sure this could be Moriarty? I know you've had concerns, but.."

"As usual John, I am absolutely sure of of the fact. Moriarty is involved. In fact, I am quite certain he will be here soon to meet us. I daresay he is expecting me." Sherlock ran a finger along the mantlepiece above the converted to electric fireplace, noting the dust on his finger and shrugging indifferently at the line he left on its surface. He tossed his coat and scarf onto their one shabby purple couch, and as he did so, sat abruptly in Laurel's favourite chair, steepling his fingers and settling back into the plush antique velvet.

Laurel's mind had been whirling since the tea house, and now she grew worried as she saw the look of trepidation on John's face at this short speech by Sherlock. Obviously Moriarty was somebody dangerous... Laurel could already see that John was the easygoing one of this pair, and if he looked that much more worried than usual...

She sat down next to John on the couch, folding hands in her lap as she did so, and trying to take a few deep breaths to clear her mind. "Listen, John, Sherlock, I can tell that you both seem to know a lot more about what's going on here. Would you possibly mind filling me in? It's just, I've been holding back my worries about Sara now all afternoon, and this is all a little much, and I would really love some answers." She looked down at her hands, resisting the urge to lift one to her mouth to start biting her nails, her dreaded nervous habit.

John moved closer to her on the couch, patting her on the shoulder. "That's completely understandable. I'm sure that Sherlock would be willing to give you a quick run down of the facts, wouldn't you, Sherlock.." John's voice drifting off with a faint note of surprise; Sherlock had suddenly sat up straight in the chair, coming out of his brown study when John had laid his hand on Laurel's shoulder. He bolted upright and strode about the room, obviously agitated.

"Well, John, if you stopped flirting and making small talk for a moment, I could get on with that."

John looked at Sherlock, exasperated, and moved a bit further away from Laurel on the couch. "Honestly, Sherlock, you take any comforting on my part as flirting, you'd think by now you'd see how many people you put in traumatic situations..."

As John and Sherlock bickered, Laurel felt a note of surprise creep into her mind. John had been friendly, yes, but it was true, he was really doing nothing more than comforting her. Was Sherlock... jealous? He didn't seem the type of man to be jealous of much. Too much in his head, not one to care about the world about him unless it was interesting in some way to him... it didn't help that as they fought, Laurel decided that Sherlock was well and truly gorgeous. She wondered how many women around London felt the same way about this obviously unobtainable man. Or was he unobtainable? She watched Sherlock pacing, not really hearing the argument between him and John, observing instead his wonderfully well put-together suit. It appeared he liked the colour purple, as his button up shirt was also this colour. A lovely deep shade, with tiny, shiny purple buttons... Laurel shook her head and sat up straighter. This wasn't the time to let her feelings get away with her.

A sudden knock at the door surprised them all. Laurel jumped up and headed to the door without thinking, sliding the deadbolt and peering through the peephole. "Who is it?" the peephole seemed to be obscured. She opened the door a crack and John jumped up. "Laurel, wait.."

The door burst open wider, shoving Laurel to the floor. After a beat pause, an elegant man strode in, dressed in what Laurel thought was also a fantastic suit. He wasn't wet from the rain at all; in fact, he was so well put together that Laurel wondered where he had been before this. His large, dark brown eyes seemed almost black in the dim light of the flat, and inhuman in their coldness. He smiled, an electric expression on his face, as both John and Sherlock took a step back. As the door opened wider, he pulled Sara in behind him. She was rain-bedraggled, her ponytail falling out in spiky wet pieces, her lipstick smeared where she had been obviously hit in the mouth. Laurel tried to run to her immediately. "Sara.." As she choked out the name, John grabbed her tightly by both arms, dragging her back. "No, no... not a good idea, trust me."

The inhuman man in the suit smiled even wider, baring his sharp, small teeth. "Well, well, Sherlock. I'm impressed, it took you even less time that I'd thought for you to get here."

Laurel was immediately and painfully afraid of what was going to happen next.

"What is it you want with the girl?" John asked, still firmly holding onto Laurel's shoulders.

Moriarty turned his excited face to Sherlock and made an exaggerated frown, "He's so simple. How do you keep from boring yourself?"

"Kidnapping?" Sherlock questioned, ignoring everything that had just been said. "That's seems a little menial for you."

Moriarty shrugged, "It depends who you take, and what they can do for you." His eyebrows moved up and down suggestively as he nudged Sara with his elbow.

Sara made a disgusted face and shoved him back. "Laurel, this man is mental—seriously, he's not right in the head."

Laurel shook her head, shocked that Sara was insulting this oddly attractive yet clearly crazy man, when she should've been scared stupid. "Shh!" she commanded, trying to keep her friend from getting hit again.

Moriarty leaned towards Laurel, exaggerating a whisper and saying "Between you and I, she does have a bit of a mouth on her."  
Sara took this chance to slam the heel of her foot into the toe of Moriarty's shiny black shoe and running quickly towards her friend, but was suddenly jerked backwards. Her captor had snatched the back of her hair and pulled her back against him, this time keeping a vice like grip on her hair, digging his finely manicured nails into her scalp.  
"Whew! Close one!" He pretended to wipe sweat off his head, and as he did so he gracefully pulled a gun out of his jacket, holding it against Sara's neck.

"I still scuffed your shoe." Sara muttered a small victory.

"Oh my God." Laurel's voice sounded hollow. She slowly took in a deep breath. Her body felt numb, except for the tight hold that John had on her arms now, possibly keeping her from falling down. "There's a gun now." She finished her thought.

"What was the point in this meeting, might I ask?" Sherlock sighed, clearly bored by the situation and wanting to get on with the evening. "Was it just for theatrics?"

Moriarty gave him a big smile and looked around the room. "Oh! Look at all of you!" his voice changing pitch with every word. "All so scared."

"No one here is scared." Sherlock muttered his retort.

"I am." Laurel interjected, assuming that as sexy as he was, he was probably just as mad as Moriarty.

Sherlock shook his head. "Look at the gun, clearly pointed at her throat, not a kill shot. She's also barely been touched; therefore he needs her for something, something that she hasn't done for him yet. Also, no torture of any other sort of real harm has come to her, seeing as she is still relenting against him—which he's clearly surprised by." Sherlock turned towards Moriarty. "That girl is giving you more trouble than she's worth?"

Moriarty let in a huge mock gasp, "I would never be so rude as to insult a lovely young lady like that." He said as he gave Sara's hair another yank. She let out a muffled grunt of pain.

"I do have one question." Sherlock said, bringing his fingers into a delicate steeple in front of his lips.

"Oh?" Moriarty questioned, using the barrel of the gun to scratch his temple.

"Why bother with all of this if you don't' even plan on telling me what you're up to?"

Moriarty laughed, "It's all about reading between the lines, ." he said these words as though they were some sort of statement. "By the way, I thought you'd be interested to know that I've obtained a new partner. He's wonderful."

"I'm sure he is." John said, sarcasm dripping from every word.

"Oh yes!" Moriarty continued, either ignoring the sarcasm or perhaps because he didn't know what it was. "He's very witty, a smart dresser, and very good. Oh, he is very good. Much better then you are, Sherlock. I think you're going to have fun with this."

"Is it someone I know?" Sherlock asked, a pensive look on his face, as though going through a mental rolodex of potential people who'd join this mad man.

"Not yet." The smile faded from Moriarty's face as he twisted Sara's hair around, she gasped and tried to turn her head with him, but the gun digging into her throat was slightly problematic, and was keeping her from moving. He puffed his cheeks up and blew onto his wrist, moving Sara's hair away from him, and checked his watch. "It's time to go, I'm afraid, but I'll see you soon."

"You're not taking the girl." Sherlock stated.

"No?" Moriarty looked worried for a moment. "I'm afraid you don't have a choice, she's not being as cooperative as we'd like, so we'll have to hold onto her for awhile. Consider this a message of good faith, and an encouraging nod to a good chase."

Sherlock took a step forward, "I don't want to play games with you! There will be no chase this time." He was angry, his lips frowning and his brow furrowed. He clenched his fists and glared daggers towards his enemy.

"That's a shame, you don't seem to have a choice in that either. Also, my new associate loves games, in fact he even beat me a few rounds." Moriarty turned towards Sara, "Any last words?"

"Not a fan of the way you phrased that last bit." Sara muttered to him, he only gave her a goofy grin in return. "Laurel." She said, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you the truth, but I kind of had to swear an oath on my life, or else that one eyed bastard would come after me, or send his team to kill me, or erase me, or...I don't know! I guess they don't really kill people unless they're bad—like you." She glared at Moriarty. "Oh, when my new boss finds out about this you'll have a whole bag–of-dead-babies-kind-of-avenging-torture coming for you!" She threatened him.

"Don't ruin the surprise!" He sang. "And I can only hope they do notice you're absence. My associate can't wait for that part."

"Laurel, I'm sorry I couldn't tell you!" Sara said, ignoring the loons' crazy ramblings.

"Tell me what?" Laurel cried, finally pushing away from John and taking a step towards her friend.

"Ah! Ah!" Moriarty pointed the gun at Laurel. "That's enough chitchat. See you soon!" his last three words were high pitched and girly as he quickly stepped outside of the doorframe, pulling Sara after him, and shutting the door.

Sherlock and John ran towards the door, opening it and finding no one there. Just strands of Sara's hair and a puddle from where she'd been standing, no trace of Moriarty, as usual.

"So what now?" John asked.

"We go after them!" Laurel volunteered, urging them to follow suit.

Sherlock shook his head. "This isn't right."

"What?" John moved closer to Sherlock. "This is no time to escape to your mind palace, we need to focus. We need to figure out who Moriarty's new friend is, and who Sara works for and possibly a lot of guns."

"We need a Doctor." Sherlock said.

Laurel collapsed onto the floor suddenly, her legs giving out. I am not going to faint, dammit, she thought to herself. I don't faint, wimps faint and I am not a...-was the last thing she remembered thinking before falling into blackness.


	2. Chapter 2

She woke up a few minutes later, laid out on the couch with John crouched beside her. "All a bit much, isn't it?" he asked, his fingers on her wrist as he took her pulse. He glanced at his watch, timing her heartbeats, then shrugged and gently laid her hand at her side. "You're just a bit flustered, I'd say. No permanent damage."

"Oh, so you're a doctor! Is that what Sherlock was walking about? Can you help somehow? Oh god, I hope you can, if anything happens to Sara I.."

Sherlock cut in, startling Laurel with his proximity; he was standing directly behind the couch, she suddenly noticed, looming over her. "No, I need a different sort of doctor. I am terribly sorry, but I must step out for a moment. Phone calls to make. Mrs. Hudson has an old friend from Friday Night Bingo that might be able to put me in touch with the man I need to talk to." He glanced at Laurel, the glance turning to a stare as he seemed to be pulled in by her eyes. He straightened up and headed for the door, cellphone in hand, and strode out into the hallway, closing the door softly behind him.

"Well, a regular night for us, it seems," John snorted, sitting in the chair across from the couch. Laurel sat up slowly, making sure she didn't start to see stars or black spots. She rubbed her head where she had bumped it after falling over. "uh.. um... would you like some tea? I have lots of different kinds, I can make us some." Laurel smiled, her mouth trembling. "My mom and my grandma always said tea can help any situation, even if it's just a little bit of help."

John smiled at her, getting up out of the chair. "I'd love some tea. Tell you what though, you just stay put for a minute, don't want you falling over again. Which cupboard is it in? I'm sure I can handle boiling a little water." Laurel smiled her thanks at him, directing him to the shelves over the stove and the cast iron teapot on the back left burner. Just as the water boiled, Sherlock came back in, again carefully closing the door behind himself. Considerate of him, Laurel thought, I don't think I can handle any more loud noises or excitement until at least tomorrow.

Sherlock came to a stop directly in front of her, hands in his pockets, head slightly tilted to one side. He seemed to be studying her in minute detail, noting the strain in her body, the clasped and twisting nervous hands, the worry in her eyes. "It seems to me you're holding back on your emotions quite a bit right now. Why is that?" He stared directly into her eyes, making Laurel blink and look down at her hands quickly. Damn, beautiful eyes... she shuddered slightly and looked back up again. "Well, to be honest, I'd like nothing more than a good cry to go with the tea John's making, but I know that won't help us find Sara. I can be really emotional, but I try not to be when I need to get though something... something hard. Something like this. It never helped. I'll hold off on the cry till tonight or tomorrow or whenever I get a break."

Sherlock seemed pleased with her answer. "Trust me, Moriarty's little act was just a tempest in a teapot. Speaking of tea..." he smiled as John handed him a steaming cup, inhaling the scent before blowing on the oolong and taking a small sip. "John, you may not be the brightest light known to man, but you certainly make the best tea I've ever had. Mrs. Hudson couldn't do better."

"Gee thanks, I'll take the compliment for now I suppose," John retorted, but smiled nonetheless. "So. What's the plan? Did you get a hold of who you needed to talk to?"

"Whom I needed to talk to," Sherlock corrected, sitting on the couch beside Laurel, "and yes, I did. I shall expect a phone call at 12 o'clock sharp tomorrow. Until then, I plan on thinking. Drinking tea. And thinking some more." He sipped his tea again, obviously enjoying it immensely.

Laurel turned to him, tensing up with anger. "What, we're just going to sit here? Did you see what he'd done to her? He obviously hit her, for christ's sake, she looked terrible and he looked so... so inhuman! What's he going to do to her next? We don't have time to think this over all night!" Laurel looked wildly to the clock on the mantlepiece; nine thirty PM. Noon tomorrow was sixteen hours away! She didn't want to think about what else might happen to Sara in that time. Sherlock seemed annoyed at her outburst, squinting at her as he spoke.

"Yes, thank you for pointing out the obvious fact that she was punched in the mouth. Think for a moment! If he's had her since she left the flat earlier this evening, which we can assume he has, why isn't she in worse shape? Think of the way she was speaking to him. I think it's safe to say that you don't know everything about your dear friend Sara's new job, hmm? No librarian I ever knew could talk to an international criminal mastermind like that, with such disdain. No. She's used to dealing with his type. Maybe not for long, seeing as she was stupid enough to stomp on his toes, but familiar nonetheless. Sara will be fine where she is for the moment, and the man I hope to hear from has means of transport and depths of knowledge I could only dream of posessing."

Laurel looked back down at her twisted together hands, her cheeks beginning to burn after the admonishment. "You're right. I'm getting agitated, I apologize. Did you want to go back to your place to think? I can drop by tomorrow a little before noon. I'd like to be involved in your investigation, if you don't mind. I know I'm no genius, and I know that I obviously don't have a great grasp on some parts of Sara's life, but I am the person that's known her the longest here in London. Maybe I can still help." She looked up at Sherlock, eyes pleading. "Please?"

Sherlock gazed into her wide grey eyes, losing himself for a moment. She's not stupid, he thought in a daze, merely passionate... and lovely...

John glanced from Laurel to Sherlock and back again, sipping his tea with an expression on his face somewhere between utter amused delight, and complete surprise. Laurel broke eye contact with Sherlock first, noticing John sitting across from the two of them, smiling like a loon. Her own mouth broke into a wide smile. John's delighted smile was contagious, and she had always been more empathetic than the average person. "What? Something silly here? You look awful happy for a man involved in a caper like this..." her mouth trembled again. "Oh god, I'm sorry, I don't mean to sound rude. I just really hope you can help me. Listen, can I give you two my cell number? I think I'm going to check into a hotel for the night, I can't handle staying here knowing that... Moriarty... has access to our flat. Will you call me tomorrow in the morning?"

John had just started to reply when Sherlock interjected. "Nonsense, a hotel is completely unnecessary. You can stay at our flat this evening. Probably the safest place for you, and if I happen to come up with any questions for you, you'll be available to me at the drop of a hat. I usually prefer texting, but in this case I can make an exception." He stood up, setting down the teacup on the small round end table, next to one of Laurel's many straggled spider plants. John looked at Sherlock, obvious surprise on his face, but he merely smiled again, and stood up, turning to Laurel. "Listen, why don't you get whatever you'll need for the night together, and we can be off in a bit. I think Sherlock's right in this case, our flat will be fairly safe for you; if anybody knows Moriarty, it's our consulting detective here, and I assume he has good reason to see our flat as safe. I can also make sure you don't faint again, though I think it highly unlikely."

Laurel nodded her head in a slightly dazed way. This was all moving so quickly; she thought she'd fall asleep on whatever couch was closest once they got to Sherlock's flat. At least, she assumed she'd fall asleep, if Sherlock would let her. He seemed intent on having her around and asking more questions. As she packed a small bag with her toothbrush and a set of pyjamas in her room, she could hear snatches of conversation between Sherlock and John as they finished their tea. "Are you sure, Sherlock? You usually think best when you're left alone..."

"Yes, and yet this isn't a usual case. As Laurel said, she is the best source of information on Sara we have at this point. I'd like all the access I can have to that source."

"Couldn't Mycroft be of some help? I'm sure his clearance..."

"Yes, yes, yes, I know. He's most likely still dealing with the princely scandal at the moment, I'd hate to seem needy. In the morning, he'll always be available just before his morning tea break. He'll be the first person I call tomorrow."

Laurel walked out into the living room, her small bag and purse at her side. "I'm ready. Where to?"

Sherlock smiled at her. "Just around the corner and down a few blocks, actually. Do follow us."

As they made their way to Baker street, John talked a little more with Laurel, about small things that seemed to work at calming her down, if that had been his intent. Where she was from, about her new job at St. Bart's Hospital in the laboratory there, how her and Sara had lucked out renting their flat from a relative of Laurel's that had recently moved back to the Lake District. Sherlock glided behind them as on their first walk to Laurel's flat, seeming to listen intently to their light conversation, but without interjections this time.

Laurel thought to herself that Sherlock was lucky to have somebody like John to guide him through his day; it was obvious that John was better with getting information from people, which he could then hand off to Sherlock for his deductions. Poor Sherlock. She knew a few friends from uni like him; geniuses at their chosen fields, crap at everyday life and social interaction. She sympathized at the same time that she was sometimes exasperated by their attitude, but she tried to be understanding first, agitated later. John seemed to be the same way, at least where Sherlock was concerned.

Laurel realized that the men weren't kidding when it came to being used to mess; upon entering their flat, she had to shove aside a small stack of books, hop over a box of jars of... something, and find a path through a pile of newspapers to sit on the couch. The coffee table was littered with current issues of scientific journals, mostly chemistry, and Laurel picked one up almost automatically, scanning through it for anything interesting. She had always loved reading scholarly articles, even if she only really understood one paragraph in ten out of them.

Sherlock glanced at her, then down at his feet as mumbled something about a second best dressing gown, and disappeared down the hall, as John brought out a blanket and a couple of pillows from the closet in the entryway. "Mrs. Hudson always has a good supply of pillows to hand, Sherlock sometimes seems to make a nest of them in his bed. I'm off to bed myself; need anything else? The loo is just down the hall on the right, by the way." Laurel smiled and shook her head, wishing John a good night. She didn't even go to the bathroom to change into her pj's, instead falling into a deep, dreamless sleep as soon as her head hit the pillows of her makeshift bed on the couch. As she drifted off, she wondered whose skull it was that sat on the mantlepiece, and then she wondered no more.

It was about three in the morning when she woke up again suddenly, aware that she had to pee badly. Damn, where was the bathroom again? The hall, down the end on the left... she stumbled in the dim light coming up from the street through the window, hoping she wouldn't trip on any detritus along the way. Finding the last door handle on the last door on the left in the hall, she quietly pushed it open, peering into the darkened room. Wait... this was a bedroom... Crap! Was it on the left or right that John had said the bathroom was?

Sherlock had awoken as soon as he heard her footsteps outside her door. Going to the loo... wait, that was his door knob turning! What the hell was she doing? He tensed, and flung himself out of bed and at her without thinking. She couldn't see in here, it was a mess! In the dim light coming in his tiny window, he misjudged the distance and caroomed into her, knocking them both flat on his floor, Sherlock laid out on top of her.

"Ooff! Gah... Get... off?" Laurel gasped. Sherlock had managed to knock the wind out of her. She gasped again, trying to roll over, succeeding only in grinding her hip directly into the side of the man on top of her. He gasped himself, and tried to fling himself back up again, but slipped on the hardwood and fell against her, chest to chest and face to face. "I'm... I'm... sorry, I..." He managed to prop himself up on his hands, looking down at Laurel in the weak moonlight. Her eyes large black pools in her face, her lips seeming larger in the outline of the slanted light from the window. They were parted as she suddenly inhaled hard and breathed out again, slower this time. She seemed to catch her breath.

"Oh my god, Sherlock, I am so, so sorry. I just... I need the bathroom..." She managed to wriggle out from under him, and he flipped himself over and stood up, turning just in time to see her rush out the door and across the hall. Cheeks burning, she tried not to think about how he had felt on top of her, how much sharper his profile had been in that light... how strong his hands had felt when he grabbed her as they fell... oh, balls. As if she had chosen this guy to develop a sudden lust for! He was a cold, calculating detective, and obviously not an expert at the opposite sex, at that.

As she washed her hands in the small porcelain sink, she took a few deep breaths and stared at herself in the mirror, willing herself to calm down. Just go out there, apologize, and go back to the couch. You'll be fine. Sleep it off. She straightened her back as she headed out into the hallway once again, where she bumped nosefirst into Sherlock's chest even as he tried to step back; he had being waiting for her to come out, hoping to whatever higher power there was that he could apologize without sounding stupid like he just had in the bedroom. She bounced off him with a small yelp of pain, hit her head on the wall behind her, and fell back against him, dazed. He seemed to support her weight easily, and as she steadied herself in his arms, she looked up at his face to try and say sorry.

Sherlock surprised both of them by bending suddenly to crush his lips against hers.


	3. Chapter 3

Laurel's apology was muffled by the force of his lips against hers. She was shocked. His lips massaged hers and his tongue tentatively glided into her mouth. She immediately responded. Their tongues touched and Laurel felt and almost electric shock course through her entire body. She'd never felt such and intense reaction to someone.  
She pushed herself closer to Sherlock. His hands were pressed against both sides of her head, his thumbs gently massaging slow circles against her temples. She reached her hands up, running them through his dark curls, finally grabbing a fistful of his hair and gently tugging him even closer.  
Sherlock let out a deep moan into her mouth. The sound of his pleasure caused Laurel's stomach to tighten as the heat between her legs grew. Her right hand drifted from his hair to his long elegant neck. He groaned again and she dug her nails into his shoulder. He suddenly pushed her against the wall, without breaking the kiss, caging her body with his. She could feel the hard wall against her back and his erection against her stomach.

"Sherlock, I think I heard something—oh my God! I'm sorry, so sorry!" Jon said as he came out of his room, located right next to the bathroom, and immediately turned his back when he saw what and who had been making the noises he'd heard.

Sherlock immediately stepped away from Laurel. "Excuse me." He muttered and turned, retreating to his room and slamming the door as he did so.

Laurel was shocked by what had just happened, and how fast everything had turned. "Um..." was all she could manage.

"Well." John turned back towards Laurel. "That was interesting."

"Sorry." She said.

"Oh, don't be!" he put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "It's answered a lot of questions. No doubts about his sexuality now." He nodded, chuckling to himself. When he saw that Laurel clearly wasn't amused he withdrew his hand from her shoulder and stepped back. "Seeing as there was no intruders I'll head back to bed. Busy day tomorrow."

"Goodnight." Laurel muttered quietly, her eyes not having drifted from Sherlock's door since he'd disappeared behind it.

John walked back into his room, lightly closing the door behind him. Laurel was now standing alone in the dark hallway. She slowly made her way back to the couch, and collapsed onto her pillow. Her body was still buzzing from the passionate kiss her and Sherlock had shared. She took a deep breath. What was she doing? This was a bad idea. She liked Sherlock and was exceedingly attracted to him, but he was so guarded. The minute John appeared he'd jumped away from her as though she had the plague. Whatever was happening between her and the detective was toxic. Only then did she recall that her friend was in serious danger; kidnapped by a criminal mastermind. How could she be contemplating her feelings for a man when Sara was in trouble?  
All of these thoughts twisting themselves through her mind, she couldn't help herself, the tears began to pour from her eyes. She sobbed silently on the couch until she fell into a deep sleep.

"In you go." Moriarty threw Sara into a large room, that appeared to have been a public shower at one point in time, but the years of disuse were apparent. The floor was dust covered and full of grime. Where the shower heads once were, now only empty holes remained with circles of rust surrounding them. The dingy open room mixed with the bright florescent lighting covering the ceiling, Sara couldn't help but think of the set from the first Saw movie. This was not a room she wanted to be in.  
Moriarty slammed the heavy metal door, locking her in and glaring at her through the small open slate in the middle of the door.

"You're just going to leave me here?" She cried out.

A giggle was heard from the other side of the door, "You have a meeting with my associate. I'd hate for you to be late."

"Psycho." Sara muttered as she heard his faint footsteps retreating down the hall.  
She stood in the middle of the room and decided that it was time to remember the training she'd had back in Winnipeg before she'd left. Had Moriarty said anything stupid during his little get together with Sherlock? Yes, everything he said was insane and stupid—but something especially foolish was his mention of his new partner in crime, one who he hinted at being eager to meeting her boss and his team. That meant trouble and that she should go off the grid.  
She looked around the room, seeing a drain in the floor. She quickly walked over to it and crouched down to the ground. She pressed her ear to the drain and heard the faint sound of water flowing. Excellent, it led to the sewers.  
She sat up and took a breath, holding her left hand in her lap. She looked around, seeing nothing else in the room. Nothing sharp or resembling any sort of weapon. Alright, she'd have to do this all herself. She used her right index finger to slowly rub the surface of the back of her left hand. After a few seconds she found what she was looking for—her tracer chip. It had only been implanted underneath her skin less them a month ago.  
She took a deep breath and forced herself to rake her nails across her left hand, immediately drawing blood. She held in the urge to cry out as she continued to scratch through the skin, clawing at the flesh until she finally saw the small flat square piece of silver technology, located below her knuckle. She peeled it from the raw and bloody skin and threw it down the drain.  
When her boss figures out that she'd gotten rid of the tracer he'll know that him and his team were expected to show up, which means that the threat is a big one; anyone who gets excited by the idea of facing the Avengers was no doubt dangerous.  
Sara looked down at her bloodied and slightly mangled hand. She rubbed away the tears that had involuntarily fallen down her cheeks as she was scratching herself. She then reached underneath the short blue-grey dress she was wearing over her dark green tights and easily ripped out a long piece of the lining, wrapping it around her ripped flesh, hissing in pain as she did so. She'd done all of her job training with the professional Black Widow assassin in the basement of Red River Technical College for over a month before she started working at the S.H.I.E.L.D archives.  
Sara had spent the last few days in England sorting through and organizing some of the most protected records containing future SHIELD plans and missions, past enemies and current threats. The question was, how did they, whoever 'they' were, find out about her? The London archives were just as new as her job position. Director Fury had promised a fool proof cover up. She'd only been in London for a few days and she was already in deep SHIELD-related trouble. The urge to scream and cry overwhelmed her, but she remembered what Natasha had told her; in the extreme unlikelihood that she was in this very same situation she should remain calm and not show any fear or weakness. This way the enemy would always have that hint of doubt that she was one step ahead of them, and if she was able to keep calm it would also keep her sane. It was an illusion that she had to keep up; failing could mean losing her life. The only calm she could find was though snide remarks. True, they could very well get her killed, but it helped her feel as though she still maintained some sort of control over the situation. She looked down at the thin dress lining on her hand, already soaked through with blood. She realized that since she'd been kidnapped the most harm had been self inflicted and not done by her captors. This thought made her laugh. She burst out into a giggle which turned into an uncontrollable fit of hysterical laugher; it was all she could do to keep her fear and the tears at bay.

Sara was startled out of her giggling by the sudden sound of the squealing, rusty hinges on the door behind her. Standing back up, she turned to face... whomever it was that was coming through the door. She was stunned, and then afraid, of who it was she saw. Natasha had already told her about him; there was no doubt in her mind of who it was.

Loki.

He seemed to glide into the decrepit room, his black leather boots making no sound, his layers of leather armour and plate mail making no rustling or clanking noises. His unearthly blue eyes burned like fire above a wide, manic grin; he suddenly tossed his coal black hair back, laughing loudly, the sound bouncing and echoing in an unnerving manner off the walls of the empty showers. Sara tried not to shudder; she was determined not to show weakness, though at that moment she now truly wanted to break down.

Natasha had been clear about how hard it had been for her to interrogate this creature; how she'd given up a piece of herself for that one small hint about his intentions for Doctor Banner. She still spoke of that night in quiet tones, her eyes cast to the floor. As much as she had put up a good face for her colleagues, she had admitted to Sara that speaking of her past mistakes was one of the hardest things for her to do in the best of situations. Hearing Loki voice all her greatest fears about sins of her past had been difficult in the extreme.

Loki came to a stop only a few paces from Sara, still smiling, seeming otherworldly even in the harsh florescent lights. She noticed that he had a black folder of some sort tucked under one arm; the idea of a demigod with paperwork to do made her break into nervous giggles again. Loki stopped smiling suddenly, narrowing his eyes at her.

"You think me funny, Sara? A Midgardian such as yourself should be exceedingly careful around a Prince of Asgard such as I. Perhaps Moriarty will put up with your weak insults, but he is not a demigod like me and I will not tolerate insolence from lowly creatures."

Sara stopped giggling. Swallowing, she forced herself to look into his face, directly into his eyes. She mustn't show fear to this man. Was he even a man? She was determined to stand up to whatever he had in store for her. "What do you want, Loki? I was under the impression that your Brother was keeping a better watch on you these days."

Loki snapped at her at the mention of Thor. "Do not speak to me of that pompous, childish excuse for a leader of my realm." He pulled the folder out from under his arm, shuffling the papers in it until he came across a blueprint of some sort. Stepping even closer to Sara, he shoved the paper under her nose. "What do you know of this device? Don't play the fool with me, I know all about your new 'position' with S.H.I.E.L.D. You've seen these plans before."

Sara glanced at the paper, telling herself not to give away anything with her eyes; but she was so surprised by what she saw that her mouth dropped open.

They were copies pages from the TARDIS codex.

Sara had only handled a partial copy of this file once; she knew it was kept in vaults that she was sure even Director Fury himself didn't know the location of. Written in Gallifreyean circular script, the beautiful wording seemed to leap off the page. Complex illustrations of the inner workings of The Doctor's time ship were joined by intricate diagrams of the circuitry of the thing; it was said that the only one who truly understood the meanings of this file was The Doctor himself. Having been written in Gallifreyean _and_ an enigmatic code, the file had been worked on for years by the best cryptographers in the organization, and they had only just begun to get a grasp of the script itself, with much help from leading linguists around the globe.

Loki seemed pleased that he had been able to get such a reaction out of her. He smiled again, tucking the papers away. "Come now, Sara, is it so surprising to you that I have acquired these papers? I know Natasha has spoken to you of me. I have means you could never dream of at my disposal. I require your complete knowledge of these writings. How much does S.H.I.E.L.D. know about TARDIS? Tell me. Things can get very bad for you, very quickly, if you don't comply."

Sara gathered her composure, trying to feel as though she were wrapping herself in armour to steel herself for what came next. She had decided that even if she died doing so, she was going to be as rude as possible to this crazed lunatic of a demigod. If she angered him and he killed her, at least he wouldn't get anything out of her. "You seem overconfident for a man who was last seen being taken home by his brother like a dog who'd misbehaved, chained up like the common criminal you are. How long until Thor finds out what you've been up to? I doubt he'll be as lenient with you this time."

Loki merely smiled wider at her insults. "Oh, little spy, the spider has been trying to teach you well, but you talk too big a game for one so fresh to the playing field. I have many ways of making you talk; would abject humiliation be a good start to our evening?"

His free hand shot out suddenly, grasping her by the neck; his grip was so sudden and strong that the pulse at the side of her throat was cut off, making Sara see black around the edges of her vision, weakening at the knees. Well, passing out isn't really much, she thought, I've done it before, I can do it again...

He forced her to her knees, bending at the waist to keep a grip on her throat. "You will bow before royalty, you insignificant insect. Bow before a God."

Loki loosened his grip slightly, and Sara was able to look up from the floor at the god, and she smiled grimly back at him herself. "Geez, Loki, if you wanted a blowjob so bad that you'd force me down here, why not just ask and be forward about it? Prick." She spat the last word at him with all the venom she could muster with his hand closed around her neck. He laughed again, bending his face closer to hers. "Oh, my little Sara, you should be more careful of the things you say. I can have uses for you other than a source of information. I can take whatever I want from you. Indeed, I can even make you think you wanted to give things up to me in the first place..."

As Loki spoke, his face came closer to the side of her head, so that by the end of his short speech he was breathing the words into her ear. She was aware of the smell of him, suddenly; like the air after an electrical storm, hot metal, and warm skin. She gasped as his teeth sank into her earlobe slightly, before his tongue swept around and down to where her ear met her neck, making him chuckle. She found herself flushing red to the tips of her ears, embarrassed and aroused all at the same time. "Goodness, little spy, do you enjoy this? Would you like to serve your God as I see fit?" He suddenly stood up, grabbing Sara by her waist, pushing her against the nearest wall, crushing her against his body. She felt her breasts heaving against him, and his eyes were fixed on hers, as though daring her to look away. As she started to slip down, he crushed himself harder to her. She cried out as the edges of loose tiles dug into her back, and he breathed in, closing his eyes, seemingly excited by her reaction.

"Oh, yes, darling, do that again for me." His mouth lowered to hers, and in her surprise, Sara couldn't help but kiss him back. His tongue was insistent, his mouth was hotter than she had thought it would be, as though he had a fever. Were Asgardians naturally warmer? She wondered wildy, as his tongue explored her mouth. His teeth clacked against hers, and he growled, sucking her lower lip into his mouth and biting down ever so gently. She moaned, unable to help herself, feeling heat shoot through her body and pool liquidly between her legs as he ground his hips into hers. "Yes, I'll have some fun with you before I get what I need out of you, I think." With one hand, he undid the clasp of his cloak, and it slithered with a hiss to the floor behind him. He held her to the wall by the neck once more as his free hand went to his belt, fluidly undoing the clasp and flipping it open.

As he shoved her to the floor in front of him, he pulled his erection out of his pants; a knee between her legs and up her chest crushed her to the wall once again. Wildy, without thinking, she spoke again in a rushed, ragged gasp. "What makes you think I won't bite your cock right off, you motherfucker?" He laughed yet again, gripping and stroking himself with one hand as the other went behind her head, fisting in the hair at the base of her skull. "Oh, little spy, if you even tried, I'd have you on your hands and knees in front of me so quickly... Let's not rush into that, shall we? Plenty of time for me to fuck you till you can't stand." with those words, he shoved her forward onto his cock, pushing her mouth onto him untill her nose was pressed in the short, coarse dark hair at the base of his belly, her throat muscles spasming as she tried not to gag.

As her started to push in and out of her mouth, Sara found herself licking around his shaft, one of her hands coming up to reach into his trousers, cradling and gently kneading his balls. He moaned and increased the pace of his pumping, breathing hard as Sara suddenly sucked and licked from the base of his erection to the tip of his glans. He shoved her mouth back down onto himself, grunting as he did so. "No, whore, you'll take it deep when I tell you to. And you'll like it." She found herself agreeing; this was wrong... and yet fantastic. She'd never been more turned on before in her life. He fucked her mouth, his rhythm regular and insistent, grunting as he neared orgasm. Sara could feel his cock hardening even more in her throat, his balls tightening against his body as she played with them. Her own pulse was heavy throughout her entire body, throbbing in the wetness between her legs. She moaned against him as he shoved in and out of her throat.

It was the moan that seemed to send him over the edge; he came, hot and hard, and Sara swallowed without thinking. He held her mouth against him with both hands twined in her hair until he finished coming with a shuddering gasp, his eyes closed in a head thrown back, mouth open in a silent scream. As suddenly as he had grabbed her by the neck only minutes earlier, he let her go.

Sara fell against the wall, banging her head, slightly dazed. She watched as Loki turned away quickly, putting himself together as he walked towards the door. She raised one hand to her bruised lips, smeared with her lipstick, as he reached the door, turning suddenly towards her, his manic grin still in place. "Oh yes, little spy. We're going to have much more time together before this is all done." He left the room as quietly as he had entered it, only the door hinges squealing in the silence. Sara fell to one side, her cheek resting next a rusted out drain. Smiling suddenly, she spoke aloud. "I don't think I'll mind fucking my way out of this one..." Her eyes closed, and she soon drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep under the harsh lights.


	4. Chapter 4

Loki leaned against the rusted metal door. How had a mere mortal made him feel this way? The human race, their humanity and ignorance repulsed him. Everything about them; they deserved nothing less than to be ruled, enslaved and destroyed. They were nothing but cattle to be used at the will of those who were much more powerful than they could ever hope to be...alas, this one had something about her. The moment he'd walked through the door he could feel her fear, it radiated off of her like acid off the pointed fangs of Jormungand, yet she fought against this fear. The only emotion he'd managed to pull from her was the shock of having gotten the measly blue prints of the TARDIS.  
He smiled as he pushed himself gracefully off the door and began to walk down the hall, checking again to make sure his armor was in place. This girl intrigued him. He'd always known that he felt nothing for anyone, yet he felt for her; for her fear, her facade of bravery and her twisted feelings towards him. He felt for no one, he repeated to himself, as though that could make his emotions disappear. It was a weakness. His mind drifted for a moment, thinking of his brother with that useless being Jane. She wasn't even worth his time to kill, rape or do otherwise. However, Sara...she was different. He didn't know what to think. Perhaps she was just a less revolting creature to whom he could use and then toss out, to execute, or to give to the Avengers to try to pick up the pieces of the state he'd leave her in.  
Either way, he needed to process and think upon what his thoughts towards this girl were, this attempt spy, this terrified human.

"Where to now?" Rose asked as she spun around the TARDIS console, grinning up at the Doctor. "Mars? You promised to bring me to a party on Mars. You're always going on about how in the future they have the best parties."

The Doctor turned away from the monitor he'd been observing and looked down at her, smiling, "Well, that depends on whose future you're referring to. Your future is centuries back, but in our future here Mars is more of a gloopy mess of wibbly wobbly clay people. Caves, they love their caves, would you like to go spelunking? That's not far from here...and neither is Mars." He wiggled his eyebrows up and down.

Rose laughed, "I'm game for whatever you are." She challenged, excitement welling up inside her. This was always her favourite part; the question of where and when they'd be heading to next. With the TARDIS anything was possible, anywhere was possible. It was an exhilarating thrill. "What about the crystal mines of—" she was suddenly cut off by the loud vibrating of her cell phone on the console. She snatched the cell phone up and answered "Hello?" she paused for a second and then smiled "Hi mom! How've you been?"

The Doctor cringed a little when he heard the garbled screeching voice of Jackie Tyler on the other end of the phone. He'd only slightly regretted altering the phones space and time interceptor, but it made Rose happy to have a quick way to get a hold of her banshee mother. He ran his hand through his messy brown hair and leaned his back against the console, crossing his legs and arms.

"Yes, of course we will." Rose continued her side of the conversation. "Oh mom, what year are you calling from? I just want to be sure that we get home at the right time." She paused for a moment as she waited for Jackie to answer. "Wow, that's quite a ways away, but we'll see you then! Bye!" she hung up the phone and looked at the Doctor, who looked back at her, anticipating what she was going to say.

"Let me guess, our parties on Mars must be put on hold because Jackie wants a visit?"

"I thought it was spelunking you wanted to do?" She questioned, trying to make him smile, knowing that visiting her mother wasn't his favourite way to spend his time.

Her smile warmed his heart and he couldn't help but return the gesture. "Alright, let's go visit your mom. What time?"

"My quite distant future, 2014—also, you won't be visiting my mom." She informed as he began to rush around the console twisting keys, pressing buttons, pulling levers and hammering screens. "You're presence has been requested by someone."

"Oh?" The Doctor questioned as he poked his head out from behind the heart of the TARDIS, raising one eyebrow.

"Yes." She continued, "My mom said she was at bingo just last night and her friend said her tenant has requested a meeting with you."

"Her tenant?" He asked, scratching his head confused. "Did this 'Mrs. Hudson' mention the name of her tenant?"

Rose scrunched up her face, trying to remember the name her mother had given her. "My mom speaks so fast sometimes it's hard to take everything in."

The Doctor rolled his eyes, he knew of this only too well. "Jackie does possess some very particular talents."

"Holmes!" Rose burst out. "His name was Sherlock Holmes."

The Doctor frowned. "Something must be very wrong then."

Rose frowned. "Who is he? Is he important? What will we be doing for him?"

"We?" The Doctor repeated, as he turned his attention back to the monitors, keying in the coordinates. "You're visiting your mom. This is one adventure I'm going to have to do alone." He stated, trying to make his rules clear to her. "If it has anything to do with Sherlock Holmes I'm sure it will involve the government and police authorities to some extent. It will be very boring and tedious, I'm sure." He explained, trying not to let his emotions show how worried this house call made him. Perhaps if she thought it would be boring and paperwork, she'd be less inclined to ignore his wishes and follow him along, as she had done many times in the past.  
He pulled up a section of the steel floor of the TARDIS and stomped the heel of his converse shoe into the wires a few times.

"Oh." Rose looked a little disappointed. "Well, I suppose that just means you'll have to make it up to me when we leave again."

The Doctor looked her in the eye, smiling, "That's a promise." He said as he slid the floor back into place. "Ready?" He asked, and received a nod from his companion, "Alright then, allons-y!" He slammed his palm against the big green button and the TARDIS began to violently shake and spin. The ship felt as though it might tear apart, rejecting them into the endlessness of the wormhole it easily glided its way through, but the Doctor knew better. This was the last TARDIS in existence; he and the ship shared that in common. All the others had been decommissioned and replaced by newer models...that was, before his planet was destroyed. Either way, the ship and his companions were all he had left, and all he needed. That was precisely the reason why he was urging that Rose stay with her mother. Something about this seemed wrong, and big...and bad. He sensed a big ripple in time, even the three monitors that surrounded the controls had shown a large spike in the timeline when he'd entered in the coordinates. That meant that there was an event coming; one that didn't have a particular destiny, it could go either way; completely altering the timeline. Changing the world and the universe along with it, and most likely not for the better. The question that kept circling his mind was who could be behind this? Could it be one of his many enemies trying to hit him where it hurt the most; Earth? Or someone new, someone worse than even his most hated enemy, the Master? If that was even possible, no one could be as horrible as him, not even the Daleks. He looked up and saw Rose looking at him, a worried look on her face; she clearly knew that he was concerned about something. He quickly smiled at her and slammed a wooden mallet against one of the gauges; "Always anxious that she'll fall apart on us one day." He said, trying to cover his apprehension. She giggled, and he knew he'd been successful in tricking her. He took a deep breath as the whooshing noise of the TARDIS began to slow. It was time to meet this threat. Just another day for the Doctor.

Laurel woke up slowly, light from the window filtering through dust motes dancing in the air of the flat. Oh, god, what a crick she had in her back... and this pillow was awfully lumpy.

She sat bolt upright in a blur upon remembering where she was, what had happened yesterday, and worse, what had happened in the night. As she tried to burst up off the couch, she fell over, dizzy-headed from sitting up and then jumping up too fast. Spots danced in her eyes and she bumped her knee against the coffee table, before she overbalanced and thumped loudly onto the floor on her backside, legs sprawled out in front of her.

Sherlock chose this moment to come gliding down the hall, newspaper under one arm, clad in plaid pj bottoms and a blue silk robe over a worn grey t shirt. Glancing at her for a bare instant with one eyebrow cocked, he took in her dazed expression and pained eyes, seeming not to notice or care about the questions in them. "Do be careful, wouldn't want you to injure yourself before you can be of help in finding your friend." He slipped past her and went into the kitchen, seemingly completely nonchalant, as if last night had never happened. "Would you like some tea?"

Laurel decided in that moment that she would never, ever speak about what happened last night with this... robot of a man. "Sure. Got any chai?" As she stood up, she wondered just how he managed to stow away any thoughts of what they'd done. She resolved not to think about it until after this... whatever it was that was going on with Sara was over. The time for sexual tension was not now. Despite her attempts to logic away her feelings, a creeping note of anger stole into the back of her mind. Oh, so we're going to play the 'who says something first' game, are we? Bastard.

Sherlock busied himself setting the water to boil, trying to forget the look in Laurel's eyes. Damn, why had John interrupted like that? He usually slept like a dead man! How to talk about what had happened? Perhaps she would bring it up? God, that would be easier, he thought fervently, so much easier than trying to... well... start off things. 'Hi, sorry I shoved my tongue down your throat last night, but maybe you'd like to do dinner sometime?' Christ, thought Sherlock, I've no idea what I'm even doing!

As Sherlock came out with the tea tray, John appeared, wearing a set of flannel pyjamas and the white bunny slippers Mrs. Hudson had given him for Christmas as a joke. Despite how comical the things were, he just couldn't give them up; they were far too comfy. As he stood blinking in the light, yawning enormously and stretching his arms, Laurel got an eyeful of the slippers from her spot on the floor, and looking up at John, stifled a giggle. He noticed, and gave a small laugh himself. "Yes, yes, bunny slippers, but don't laugh too much, you wouldn't believe how warm they are. Appearances aren't everything." scratching his head, he took a covert glance at both her and Sherlock. So they'd decided not to talk about it after all. John thought that maybe it was a little cruel of Sherlock not to explain how he felt about his work, but with a mental shrug, figured it wasn't his place to say anything. Not like he had much success with the opposite sex himself much these days. Taking a steaming cup of tea from the tray, he added a splash of cream and sat down on the chair opposite Sherlock's, where Sherlock had ensconced himself, as was his usual habit. "So then, it's nine. I say we get a little breakfast into us, and then what's the plan?"

"I'm sure Laurel will want to return to her flat for a change of clothing. After that, I suggest we make a visit to the central library location; I'm sure my contact will be able to meet us there, and I wouldn't mind having a look at Sara's work. I'm sure it will be most informative. Laurel will no doubt be of help in that endeavour. And John, I'd like it if you could go and visit Mycroft for me at the Diogenes club. He certainly seems to respond better to your entreaties for help with government clearances than to mine."

"If you two could stop acting like unusually tall five-year-olds in eachother's presence, I'm sure you'd find both of yourselves easier to manage. I think I can do that, certainly. What time will he be at the Club?"

"I should say for twelve o'clock sharp. I'd catch him on his way in, if I were you. Get him before he gets down to the paperwork he undoubtedly has to finish with concerning the scandal."

"Wait, aren't we supposed to hear from your contact at noon? Will I be able to meet up with you all later?"

"Oh, later on, certainly. For now though, it'll most likely be Laurel and myself until you finish with my dear brother." Sherlock cast his eyes down to the paper he had unfolded on the coffee table, taking a sudden strong interest in the obituaries.

Laurel looked out the window, hoping her face wasn't going too red at the mention of her and Sherlock going off alone without Sherlock's trusty interpreter. I need to get a boyfriend, she thought grumpily, maybe then I wouldn't be lusting after a robot-detective-freakjob like this winner. She absentmindedly sipped her tea, nodding as John offered to walk her over to her flat whilst Sherlock showered and dressed. God, she hoped this wouldn't be too awkward.


	5. Chapter 5

Sherlock, Laurel decided, was a complete tit. A clueless tit at that. Really, Sherlock, you needed to sit crammed up next to me in the cab on the way to the library? Oh, splendid, yes, I really wanted to be in close contact with you whilst we got stuck in construction for a half-hour. Little glances my way aren't going to help. Also, did it look like I needed help over that puddle? I almost fell over trying to avoid you grabbing at my arm! Laurel brushed ineffectively at the smear of mud from the cab's door she had acquired on her jacket as she had tried to jerk away from Sherlock's grasp. He had seemed surprised, and then perhaps even hurt, just for a split second; just as suddenly he was striding away towards the library building, turning up his coat collar as smoothly as ever. Smashing, he thought, wilting inwardly. She hates me.

Laurel was amazed at Sherlock's transformation in attitude as they approached the front desk. Smiling in a completely charming manner at the young woman manning the information kiosk, he asked in a cheerful voice if she perhaps knew where the archivists worked; you see, I wanted to surprise my sister Sara for her birthday with a posh lunch. Did she perhaps know where he could go? He felt terrible, he had forgotten his directions Sara had given him that one time so that he could bring her mobile down that day she'd forgotten it at their parent's place after dinner.

Smiling and tittering, the woman led them through the stacks until she came to a door with a security card lock. Swiping her card, she wished him luck with the surprise lunch, and to please say hi to Sara, she hadn't even seen her come in this morning like usual! Dropping the facade the moment the woman turned away, Sherlock quickly made his way down the corridor revealed behind the "employees only" sign. Laurel followed, slightly amused at how good an actor Sherlock was, and just how silly the girl had been. She frowned suddenly as Sherlock took a left. Oh God, did he put on an act for me too? The now familiar feeling of embarrassment began to creep along her spine. A vision of his lips on hers, how her body had felt pressed against his, came unbidden to her mind; she almost walked into Sherlock as he stopped suddenly outside an unmarked door.

Sherlock was frowning. "this is all a little to anonymous for archiving, don't you think? Where are all the signs? Normally the public has access to most of the archives here. Sara works a little higher up than she's letting on, I think." He turned the knob on the door, slipping through, Laurel once again creeping behind.

Sherlock and Laurel found themselves in a long hallway. The floor was concrete, the walls looked like mirrored tinted glass, and regardless of the bright blue-white fluorescent lights that ran along the center of the concrete ceiling, the hall still appeared dark and cold.  
"Hmm." Sherlock stepped towards the wall and touched it, ignoring his pensive reflection. "Bulletproof." He muttered.

Laurel arched an eyebrow in his direction. "Bulletproof?" she repeated. "Are you sure? That seems a little out of place for a library."

Sherlock spun around, a sneer on his face. "Don't be insolent, of course it's bulletproof." He saw the angry and hurt look on her face and quickly spun back towards the wall, "This entire place is wrong. Something much deeper than we know is going on here."

He's nothing but a drone, incapable of thinking of anyone or anything but his work, Laurel decided. He didn't even care who he insulted, if they acted anyway differently then he expects them too. She shook her head angrily and began to make her way down the hall towards the black metal plated door at the end.

"Stop!" Sherlock hissed, watching as Laurel froze mid-step. "There may be traps." He said.

"You mean of the booby persuasion?" Laurel asked and then rolled her eyes. "Sara has to be here by 8 AM every morning, the girl is useless until at least eleven. There is no way she'd be able to maneuver through a hall of traps that early." She finished her explanation and saw a worried and doubtful look in Sherlock's eyes. She smiled and quickly finished making her way to the door, turning and bowing when she'd gotten to the other end of the hall.

Sherlock let out a grunt of annoyance as he followed her lead. "No need to be childish or boast." He refused to look her in the yes.

Laurel glared at him, crossing her arms. "You're one to talk."

"We need a password." He stated.

"What for?" She snapped. "Just in case things between up get too intense? So you can utter the word out of cowardice and flee from me again?" she demanded, her rage finally getting the better of her.

Sherlock slowly turned to her. "I said password." He motioned to a number panel on the wall. "Not safeword." He clarified.

"Oh." Laurel's entire face went red. "Yes...well...sorry about that." She cleared her throat and turned to the keypad. "So what now?" she was desperate to change the subject.

Sherlock leaned in and inspected the panel. "These require a four digit code, which I assume Sara created on her own." He quickly turned his gaze to her. "You know her, what would you guess the code to be?"

He has such beautiful eyes, Laurel thought. Dark eyes that seemed to pull her into them. She noticed his long lashes, imagining them fluttering lightly against her cheek. He always seemed so tense and pensive, so impenetrable, yet his eyes held a calmness to them, and not just for him, but also for her. Just looking into them she felt as though her troubles were drifting away and she with them.

"Thoughts?" he asked, his voice sounding almost breathless, as though he'd been experiencing the same train of thought.

"A four digit code...hmm." She looked away, clearly not being able to think strait while looking at him. God, how could she be feeling such emotions for a man that barely had any of his own? "Try POTO." She suggested.

He turned to the key pad and pressed 7686. "Access denied, please try again." A cool computerized female voice announced.

"How about Erik?"

The numbers 3745 were punched in. "Access denied, please try again." The voice repeated.

"What kind of codes are these?" Sherlock asked, glancing up at her questioningly.

Laurel smiled. "She likes using codes that spell out words or names of her obsessions; Phantom of the Opera, Eric is the phantom's name, excreta, etcetera..." She explained. "Oh! Try Tom H.!"

Sherlock let out a sigh and was about to press in the numbers when he heard a voice behind him, "Did someone call for a Doctor?" Both he and Laurel turned to see a man leaning against the door frame at the other end of the hall. "I always wanted to say that." He said and then waved, "Hello!"

Laurel looked at the man, he seemed strange, and very excited. He was wearing maroon converse sneakers pared with a bright blue suit and brown tie. He was exceedingly thin; however this trait gave him exquisite cheekbones. His eyes were big and brown and his hair was dark brown and completely messy—yet he somehow managed to tame his wild hair into an oddly stylish pompadour.

Sherlock didn't react, he simply asked, "How did you get in here?"

The man held up a blank leather notebook, with only a single piece of yellowed parchment in it. "According to my psychic paper, and that lovely receptionist out there, I'm a..." he looked at the blank paper, a look of astonishment on his face, "A massage therapist?!" He gave the paper a quizzical look and gaped at Laurel "Does your missing friend order a lot of personal massages on the job?"

Laurel laughed, "Seeing as she's only been here for a few days, I'm going to say no."

The man shook his head and put the psychic paper back into his jacket pocket. "Weird receptionist, lovely, but weird—eh, that's ok though, I like weird, weird is good!"He admitted with a shrug and a smile. "So, what have we got here?" he made his way down the hall.

"Beware for booby traps." Laurel warned with a wide grin. She looked up at Sherlock who was glaring down at her. This made her chuckle.

"Did I miss something?" The man asked.

Laurel shook her head, "Nothing dire. We're trying to figure out the code and failing."

"Not failing!" Sherlock snapped, "We would've gotten it...in time."

"Well, how about I save you that time." The man reached into hi jacket and came out holding an odd device. It was made of steel, the middle was thick and had beautiful looking carvings etched into it—perhaps another language? On the tip of the object was a bright blue light. The man adjusted the settings and pointed it at the key pad. A strange high pitched squeal began to omit from the device. "Bet you wish you had a sonic screwdriver, Sherlock." The man teased.

"I prefer to use my mind to solve puzzles, not tools and gadgetry." Sherlock snapped.

The man shrugged, keeping the screwdriver pointed at the keypad. He suddenly looked at Laurel. "Sherlock, as I'm sure you know, has no need for manners and thus is bad with introductions. I'm the Doctor." He said.

"Nice to meet you!" So this was the doctor that Sherlock had called. Why was he acting like such an asshat to his nice medical man who was only there to help them? "I'm Laurel."

"Always nice to meet new friends." He said as he pulled the screwdriver away from the wall and began to inspect the information it was reading out.

"So..." Laurel looked at Sherlock, who appeared to be pouting, the silence was getting awkward. "You're a doctor." She stated the obvious. "Doctor who?"

The Doctor only smiled and looked up from his tool for a moment, "Exactly."

Sherlock made a noise of disgust. "Can we please get on with it?"

"The code was Tom H, wasn't it?" Laurel guessed.

The doctor put on his thick black rimmed glasses, scowling at the code the screwdriver presented him with. He pressed the numbers 5654.

"Access granted." The female computerized voice announced. "Good morning Miss Wilson, please provide finger prints."

"Jesus Christ!" Sherlock exclaimed, clearly frustrated. "How many layers of security does this place have?"

"A cornea test and DNA sample." The Doctor informed, putting his screwdriver away.

"5654?" Laurel questioned, still looking at the keypad. "What does that spell?"

"What now?" Sherlock questioned angrily, not used to being stuck.

The Doctor shrugged. "Unless you have her hand, her eyeball and some DNA present, I don't know. Then again, you are the consulting detective..."

"And you're the alien." Sherlock spat back.

The doctor only nodded, "When I spoke to John back at your place, he warned me that you were in a mood."

"Enough squabbling." Laurel announced, before Sherlock could utter another insult. "Sherlock, stop being an asshat." She turned towards the Doctor. "And you, you're an alien? Seriously?"


	6. Chapter 6

Sara's eyes slowly opened. She found herself lying face down on the tiled floor, her arms covering her head attempting to grant her darkness form the bright lights. She went to push herself up but hissed in pain when she put any pressure on her left hand. She rolled over, and sat up looking at her hand. The skin felt tight and feverish when she touched it. Every moment she made with it hurt and felt like she was grating her already torn flesh against sand paper. She began to unwrap the dress lining she'd put over it as a makeshift bandage, but found that the material was stuck to the dry blood and puss of the wound. Alright, she thought, well that's not going anywhere. She wrapped the lining back around it, choosing to not worry about it at the moment. She then touched her mouth, feeling a cut that had split her lip and was still swollen from when Moriarty had bitch slapped her yesterday, like the Queen he truly was.  
She raised her right hand and gently pressed it against the back of her head, a small tender bump was there from when Loki had released her so suddenly after she'd...she didn't want to think about that.  
Out of every enemy the Avengers had why did it have to be him? The one villain she'd been overly fascinated with. She'd forced ever detail she could about him out of Natasha. His story was a sad and twisted one. The moment her clearance to access the SHIELD computer base passed she'd spent far too much time researching Loki, his past and present. She was the sad lonely library who loved the stories about the Norse legends and had a bleeding heart for mislead and mistreated being. Loki was a product of his surroundings and misconceptions of his world. But regardless of all of this, he was still evil. He was one of the bad guys. He'd killed so many people and she'd let him...  
She fought back tears.  
This wasn't what was supposed to happen. She was supposed to be the boring archivist who dreamt of being a superhero or spy; not being thrown into the filed with the limited knowledge she had. She was supposed to sit behind a desk dreaming of the mysterious eyes of the Trickster god, spending her time thinking of her dark obsession; not being kidnapped by him.  
Had this been only a few months ago she'd have broken down the minute she was taken, crying and pleading for her captor to not kill her—yet here she was, charading as a witty, composed smart ass. She wanted to scream, wanted to cry, but she had to keep the mask on, not letting anyone know who she really was, not until she was saved or dead.  
She needed something else to think about. These thoughts were only going to make her sick and twisted inside. What else was there—other than the frustration and regret. She thought for a moment and realized she was very nearly dying of thirst. She looked to the door and saw a silver glass and plate that were covered. As temped as she was to drink and eat whatever was under the cover, she remembered Natasha had told her to never eat or drink anything given to her, seeing as you never knew what could be in them; poison, drugs, toxins, too many possibilities.  
The thirst, hunger, pain and confusion finally got to her. Tears streaming down her cheeks she ran over to the food and threw it across the room kicking the glass, watching as the water flowed slowly down one of the drains. She sank back down to the floor when all the damage she could cause was done. Nothing to do but wait and see what happens next.

The Doctor grinned at Laurel, rocking back and forth on his heels. "Sherlock, must you give away all my secrets? But yes, Laurel, I am in fact an alien. I'm definitely not from around here! I do like it around here, though. Earth is just too much fun in almost every time period I've visited so far. Enough about me, we need to figure this out!" He suddenly clapped his hands together, rubbing them feverishly as he spoke, eyes fixed on the security pad. Sherlock appeared unimpressed with The Doctor's enthusiasm, but contributed to the conversation anyways.

"Haven't you got some sort of gadget we can use to override this thing? Would your screwdriver there do the trick?"

"'Fraid not, my deductive friend, it doesn't do DNA all that well. Although..." An idea seemed to pop into his head, and he began patting at his trouser pockets and rummaging through the inside layer of his suit, searching for something. "Aha!" he held out a small, flat, rectangular object, which Laurel thought was made of metal, but there was something about it that made her think she was wrong. "Knew I'd picked this up from the future NHS headquarters for a reason! It just seemed like a fun party trick at the time." he turned to Laurel, a questioning look in his eyes. "Have you got anything that Sara uses regularly in your bag there? A hairbrush or makeup, something like that?"

"Actually, I just stole her mini-brush off her yesterday. I haven't even used it yet." Digging into her oversized, patchwork purse, she produced a small folding hair brush, still full of Sara's hair, shining white-blonde in the light. Sherlock wrinkled his nose at it. "I hope you were going to clean that out before using it."

"It's a good thing she didn't," the doctor observed, "or else I couldn't do this!" with a flourish, he plucked a hair from the brush, and, pressing on some invisible switch on the rectangle, opened it wide, like a makeup compact or cigarette case. Inside was a black, iridescent, gooey substance, which the doctor pressed the hair into. Snapping the contraption shut, he ran a finger along one side and banged it against the wall a few times, making both Sherlock and Laurel jump. The object began to emit a series of beeps and boops, and the doctor began fiddling with it even more. "This is a portable digi-scan; doctors designed it so they could diagnose any problem a patient was having with just a DNA sample and a few parameters. It's actually a living organism, if you can believe that, one tailored to processing DNA and not much else. You should see the goo I have to feed it, it's wild. Can you tell me Sara's birthday and where she was born, please?" As Laurel provided the information, the doctor seemed to press at random spots on the digi-scan, shaking it occasionally and listening for the next noise it made. After a few moments, it suddenly emitted a flash of light, which resolved into a projection of an eyeball.

"Is that the party trick?" Laurel asked, peering curiously at the projection, reaching out to poke at it. The image wavered as her fingers passed through it, but resolved when she pulled them away.

"No, the party trick is feeding the thing. It makes the most hilarious noises!"

The doctor held the scanner flat in his hand, the projection out in front of him. Approaching the security pad, he presented the holographic eye to the scanner, which shot a laser at the disembodied eye before beeping and asking for fingerprints. Slapping the digi-scan to one hand, the Doctor seemed to stretch the contraption over his fingertips and his palm, confirming to Laurel that the scanner was indeed not made of any ordinary sort of metal. Pressing his now-coated hand to the scanner, they all waited a few tense moments before the unit beeped again, smoothly welcoming Sara to the Archives.

"That was amazing!" Laurel exclaimed. "Well now, don't get too excited, I don't have a gadget for every problem," the Doctor replied. Grinning again, he wiped the digi-scan with a handkerchief from his breast pocket before stowing away in his suit once again. "I do have lots of fun toys though!" All three of them turned to look into the next passageway that the door had slid open to reveal. Sherlock stalked through first, followed by the Doctor; he waggled his eyebrows at Laurel, and then went quickly behind the detective. Laurel stood, blinking for a moment, before gathering herself and also slipping through the door. It slid shut behind them, she noticed with forboding. I hope that opens again when we need it to.

Sara startled awake yet again a few hours later to the sound of the door swinging and squealing its way open. Loki picked his way around the mess she had made of her tray of food, quirking an eyebrow at her as he did so. "I'm sorry, did you find the chicken sandwich offensive? To be fair, I did too. Then again I can't stand the taste of any of your disgusting Midgardian slime except for alcohol. At least you lowly creatures got one thing right down here."

Sara sat up, glaring at him, then wincing as she once again put pressure on her hand. He noticed her grimace. "We can fix that for you, you know. Might be a good idea, considering how we need you to do some work for us before this is all over."

"I won't take anything you give me. I doubt you'll try to heal me, seeing as I obviously refuse to do anything for you."

"Well, not everything, eh Sara? Some things you seem quite willing to do, and without even questioning me." He chuckled in an ugly tone as she blushed from her neck up to the tops of her ears. Prick, she thought savagely. I can't wait to see you in chains again at the end of all this.

He strode up to her, pulling her to her feet by her bad hand, making her cry out loudly and tear up. He smiled wickedly at her reaction. "Now then, dear girl, I need your help, believe it or not. It would seem that our dear director Fury has safeguarded all of his busy little worker bees such as yourself ever so well; you're my only contact to the archives. And I want into those archives. You're going to go in and get all the TARDIS files you possibly can for me. Considering how surprisingly difficult you were to get a hold of, I plan to put you to excellent use. The Director does have such clever ways of disguising who is truly working for him."

Sara gulped audibly, but managed to blink back her tears and straighten her spine before answering. "Why not just break in yourself? I'm sure you're much more powerful than to need me alive. If you only need my access codes, why not just torture them out of me? I'm sure a sick fuck like you would enjoy that. Not that I'll tell you anything, of course, but hey, anything to give the Avengers more time to track your sorry ass down."

Loki sneered at her. "What makes you think they even know you're gone? That Sherlock creature is obviously much too proud to ask for anybody's help, and your little friend is so in love with him that she probably hasn't even told the police you're missing. Besides, I need you alive for your eyes and fingers as well; apparently the technology down here is sufficiently complex as to not let me use disembodied bits anymore. So unfortunate; I do so love the contraption I used the last time I needed someone's eye."

Sara had heard all about the incident in Germany. Thank god the security forces had learned from that. She resisted the urge to twitch her hands and rub her eye that came with thinking about the pictures she had seen of Loki's eye-scan victim in the archives. Steeling herself, she glared defiantly at Loki. "Like I said, you'll have to kill me before I do anything for you."

"Have you heard of the Octavius report, Sara?"

Sara suddenly felt a cold trickle of dread go down her spine.

"Ah, yes, I can see that you have. You're familiar then with all the wonderful research that was done on that strange Doctor's brain and spine after the NYPD were done with his body. How S.H.I.E.L.D got a hold that research and let Doctor Banner go wild on it, with help from that brat Stark. I have all the information from that report, dear little spy. Count yourself lucky I didn't have to kill you to get a hold of it; the last colleague of yours I had didn't last nearly as long as you have. He bored me. Never a good tactic."

A voice crackled over what sounded like an ancient PA system suddenly, echoing off the walls of the dingy showers. "Your Excellency, a... issue has arisen, could we have your assistance in the control room?" Loki sighed in agitation, running a hand through his hair and he spun on his heel, making his way towards the door. "We'll discuss this more later. Do try not to starve yourself to the point where I have you hooked up to an IV under sedation, I have plenty of doctors who are willing to do so for me." With that, he disappeared once again.

How the hell am I gonna get out of this one? Sara thought dejectedly. Am I going to have to... distract him? Her thoughts started churning madly. Perhaps 'fucking her way out of this one' was precisely what was going to save her...


	7. Chapter 7

John undid his worn brown leather jacket as he mounted the steps to the giant old house that was the Diogenes Club. At least this time I know better than to talk, John thought. Sherlock had been right; he spotted Mycroft just getting into his office as he rounded the corner of the long hallway, umbrella in hand and a paper under his arm. John noted with amusement that Mycroft also appeared to have a cupcake in his other hand; off the diet again, were we? The man would stress that badly over the state of the royalty. Honestly, it wasn't the first time the younger Prince had screwed up badly, it certainly wouldn't be the last by the look of things...

As John neared the office door, he heard Mycroft speaking in his usual posh and bored tones. "Do come in, John, I can see I won't be getting rid of you anytime soon. Honestly, is Sherlock so overwrought by being in the same room as me that he still can't ask for my help himself?"

"I don't really think I have time to get into all the weirdness that is your and Sherlock's relationship. Mycroft, we need your help. Somebody is missing, and it seems they're more involved in certain areas of your expertise than we thought. We need to know what you know about Sara Wilson."

Mycroft raised his eyebrows, sitting back in his chair and steepling his fingers the same way Sherlock so often did. "Goodness, has that case hit my dear brother's radar already? I only just set my men to it last night. I can assure you it's well beyond your league. Remember Bond Air? Hmm, yes, of course you do. I don't intend on any more mistakes like that being made. I'm afraid I'll have to ask you two to step away from this one, John. Do give my regards to Sherlock." he glanced down at his paper which was now spread open as John glared at him from the seat across the large mahogany desk. Mycroft looked up, his features softening a bit. "I really am sorry, John, but this is quite a serious business you've gotten yourselves involved with. I can tell you only that more than one government is concerned, and that we're working together. Please don't pursue this any further. You two won't get much further than the library with out my help, trust me."

John narrowed his eyes at Mycroft, pursing his lips as he did so. He leaned forward, a determined look on his face. "You do know you aren't our only source of help, right? I'm sure there are plenty of people, _doctors_ even, who'd be willing to assist us."

Mycroft looked up so suddenly that he nearly knocked his umbrella from where he had rested it against the desk. John was surprised at his reaction; was this Doctor that Sherlock had mentioned a bigger deal than he was letting on? Apparently so...

"Would you mind, John Watson, telling me just where in god's name Sherlock got access to the Doctor?"

Sara stood, once again alone, in the room. Fuck if she would help Loki with anything. She'd had enough. Either she would get out of here, or die trying. She wouldn't subjugate herself to whatever his dark and twisted mind had in store for her. He wanted to scare her, torture her, ruin her and then either kill her or let her go...completely broken. She couldn't let that happen.  
She ran over to the food tray that had been thrown across the room. She had herself a weapon. She ran back over to the door, pressing herself closely against the wall, holding the tray against her body. He'd probably be back just as quickly as he'd left, seeing as he was forced to stop mid-sentence for whatever issue had arisen. She knew how much the trickster god loved to talk, and imagined that being halted halfway through a wordy rant would anger him.  
She held her breath as she waited, shaking, terrified about what she was about to do. She wasn't stupid, she knew that this most likely wouldn't work and would result in him being very not pleased and killing her.  
Suddenly she heard the door begin to open. She slowly raised the tray over her left shoulder, feeling the shooting pain radiating up her left arm, from her wound, but ignored it. A black leather clad shadow stepped through the door, Sara closed her eyes and swung at the figure as hard as she could—the tray was stopped in midair, ripped from her grasp and throw across the room, landing with a loud clank against the cement. Sara sank down to the floor, accepting that she had lost and this was it, he was going to kill her. She took in a breath and waited for the end, refusing to open her eyes and give him the pleasure of seeing her fear and sorrow.

"Sara!"

Sara recognized the voice; she opened her eyes only to be nearly thrown backward by na uncomfortably tight hug. "Natasha?" she whispered, and hugged the woman back, her short red hair sticking to Sara's sweaty and dirt smeared cheek.

"Thank god." Breathed Natasha, who was kneeling down on one knee. "You're okay." She noticed the bruised lip and bloodied hand. "So to speak." She added.

Sara burst into tears. All her fear and sadness poured from her. "H-how did you f-find me?" she asked through quite sobs, knowing that she was still in Loki's prison and could be heard or caught at any moment. "I d-did everything you t-told me to." She held up her hand, showing her the wound.

Natasha smiled at her, "You did great." She helped the girl up. "We will always be able to find you, I promise. Now let's go, we have to get you out of here." She looked down the hall, which appeared to still be empty. "Director Fury wants to debrief you and make sure you're not too badly injured."

Hearing this information Sara began to quickly retreat deeper into the room, shaking her head back and forth. There was no way she could ever speak about what had happened to her. She was ashamed; no one could ever know. He'd defiled and used her, made her feel completely undone...and she'd enjoyed it. Swallowed by the darkness of these horrible thoughts her knees felt week and she thought for a second she might fall to the ground, or worse faint.  
In seconds Natasha was at her side, "Are you okay?" She asked with a worried look on her face. "Did you eat or drink anything they gave you?" she noted that Sara's face had paled and she looked as though she may be sick.

Sara shook her head, more tears running down her face. "I can't speak to Fury about what happened." She said, her voice barely a whisper and then she began to repeat, "I can't, I can't." Over and over again.

Natasha nodded her head, giving the girl another hug, "Don't worry; you won't have to talk to him about anything." She vowed and then slowly tried to help her walk to the door, seeing as she was horribly shaken by something. "Let's get out of here."

John looked a little surprised by the question; Mycroft had never asked questions pertaining to Sherlock's connections. John had always assumed that this was because Mycroft knew of all his connections, but now he guessed that the real reason may be that he didn't much care to toil in Sherlock's detective affairs. "You know you're brother, he has many connections, connections that he doesn't tell even me about." He shrugged, feeling reassured in the fact that it wasn't a complete lie. Sherlock didn't tell him about all of the people he conversed with to solve his mysteries, however he was very much aware of how he'd gotten a hold of this elusive Doctor.

Mycroft was massaging his temples with both hands, eyes closed in concentration. "John," he spoke without looking up. "You have to tell my brother to back off. This is none of his concern and he will only do more damage than even he can dream of causing. This is bigger than even you or I know." He looked up from his desk, placing his hands flat against the shiny polished surface, staring directly into John's eyes. "Call my brother and tell him to get out of whatever he's gotten himself into. Tell him to send the Doctor far away, far, far, far away. You must do this." He said, nearly pleading, which was horribly unlike Mycroft.

John didn't know how to react to this situation. Mycroft always seemed so together. He'd seen the man angry, amused, annoyed and passive. Those were the only emotions he ever revealed to the world, but now he seemed nearly at his wits ends. He seemed afraid. This was something John wasn't going to take lightly. "I can't make any promises." John said honestly, "You know your brother, once he's started a case, especially one as intriguing as this one, it will be hard to convince him otherwise." He admitted, and seeing Mycroft age by five years in front of him. His face sagging and eyes looking sad and worried. John cleared his throat and said, "I'll do my best." He stood up and began to make his way to the door.

"You do that." Mycroft said, lying back against his chair, completely worn by the simple conversation that had just taken place. "Sherlock, what have you got yourself into this time?"

Loki walked down the halls smiling to himself. This was more fun than he'd ever imagined it could possibly be. She had threaded to see him off in chains, carted away by his dear brother—but oh, little spy, what he wouldn't give to see her tied up by chains, cutting into that pale soft flesh. A smirk grew on his face, oh yes; he would have much fun with this one—if only he'd be able to get away from constant interruptions.  
He burst into the black security room. The only lights were the blue glow that was coming off of the twelve or so computer screens showing every part of the abandoned building they'd taken over. He saw Moriarty dressed in his designer suit, pointing a gun at the trembling security guard. "What is the issue?" Loki demanded, looking to Moriarty, rather than the drone he'd programmed to obey his every word.

"One of your toy soldiers has broken." Moriarty announced.

Loki's eyes narrowed, "And what _exactly_ does that mean?"

"He called the both of us here, but when I got here and checked the security, it appears that nothing is wrong." Moriarty explained, "It smells like a trap."

Loki's eyes widened in horror and shock, "Widow." He muttered, grabbing Moriarty's gun and shooting the security guard in the head. He turned and ran down the hall, knowing that he was being followed by his associate, ever ready with more weapons and calling in back up.  
He burst into the decrepit shower room he'd been keeping Sara in and found in empty. His heart rate jumped in anger and shock. "Find her! FIND OUT WHERE THEY TOOK HER!" He screamed at Moriarty, who didn't react to his outburst and instead just re-directed his orders through his cell phone. "Find her, and I'll get her back." He said, his voice seething, he wasn't done with his little spy. He felt his chest tighten at the thought of not seeing her again, not quite understanding why he was feeling that way. He had to get her back.

That, Sherlock thought to himself, was possibly the worst infiltration I've ever taken part in.

He turned up his collar against the once-again blustering rain as he, Laurel and the Doctor were frogmarched up into Laurel's flat by Natasha Romanov, whom Sherlock had recognized the moment she rounded on them in the bowels of the vast archive room they had managed to break into. It was here, in the heart of the London Central library, that they had come across the stacks upon stacks in a dimly lit warehouse of dead tree records that S.H.I.E.L.D. Had felt it was necessary to hold onto, despite their computerization of almost all of these files. The Doctor had been raving, running his hands over the books and sheaves of paper, Laurel following excitedly behind him, seemingly lost in delight over the sheer number of books and other various forms of the written word present in this place.

Sherlock remembered being stunned by the look on Laurel's face the moment they had first come out from the doorway into the huge storehouse of books; the pure joy and excitement in her expression, the sudden intake of breath. Her mouth had formed a soundless "oh" upon first touching a stack of what appeared to be originals of papers by Nikola Tesla, and she had looked back at Sherlock, grinning even wider than the Doctor, her eyes shining.

"Isn't this the best place you've ever seen in your life?! I could die happy here!"

She'd forgotten how angry she was at him. She'd forgotten the whole situation at hand, instead focussed completely on the vastness of the information around her.

Sherlock had realized then just how hopeless it was for him to ever "get over" a woman like her. Somebody who appreciated knowledge that much... and with a smile like that...

The door banging open startled him from his thoughts and back into the present. Natasha was still going off on them in a furious low voice. "I can't believe you three got in, I'll have the receptionist placed in the darkest basement of the most boring archive in Kansas after she pulled that shit. No, Doctor, I don't care that you had your 'psychic' paper or whatever it was, that woman is a highly trained agent... thank God I got to you before the rest of the security team did, they'd have shot you on sight. They were coming for you, you know, and..."

Natasha was cut off suddenly by the twin shouts of joy and relief that Laurel and Sara gave each other once Laurel was in the door to the flat. Sara was curled up on their purple couch, wearing her oldest, comfiest pair of PJ's, a cup of tea in one hand and an old, worn book in the other. She practically threw the tea at the ground as Laurel rushed to her, crushing her hard enough to make Sara squeak. "Don't you EVER get yourself into something like that again! And dammit, I don't care how top-top-top secret your new job is, I get to know everything from now on, ok?" Laurel glared at Natasha, daring her to say something. Natasha merely smiled. "I think I'll go pour myself some tea as well." As Natasha made her way into the kitchen, she discretely called off the security she had posted to the flat, hand to one ear to better hear the small earpiece there.

Sherlock thumped down in Laurel's chair, feeling like the room was spinning from all the sudden activity. Laurel and Sara were still sitting on the couch, hands clasped together as they talked excitedly in between Laurel hugging Sara. The Doctor smiled at the girls, and then immediately made his way around the room, picking things up and putting them down, flipping idly through books, generally touching everything and anything he could get his hands on. He finally sat down in the chair across from Sherlock with a book of Shakespeare in his hands, and pulling out his black rimmed glasses, began reading it as if they hadn't just been caught breaking into a top-secret project by what may have been the best operative in the world when it came to covert missions. He looked up and smiled briefly at Sherlock. "Quite an afternoon so far, isn't it?"

Sherlock nodded, and his eyes wandered back to Sara and Laurel on the couch once again. Damn. I wish she'd smile at me like that... Laurel was telling Sara about the Tesla papers she had seen. Her friend was smiled and told her she was a nerd, and Laurel looked down, laughing before looking up again and suddenly across the room at Sherlock. She seemed surprised that he had been watching her, but he couldn't bring himself to break eye contact with her...

John broke the moment by conveniently crashing in the door to the flat, mobile in hand. Sherlock had texted him in the S.H.I.E.L.D car that had driven them all to Laurel and Sara's flat, to come join him there; he felt like he needed a little something familiar after everything he had seen so far today.

"So then, I missed all the fun, did I?" he said cheerfully, unzipping his jacket as he heeled off his shoes. "Is that tea on? Mind if I grab a cup?" As he passed by Sherlock, he gave the detective one of his many "we need to get away and talk whenever possible" faces, but continued on to the kitchen nonetheless. He's worried about something, Sherlock thought. He's overcompensating with cheerfulness to hide it. What did Mycroft say to him?

John walked down the hall and into the kitchen to find the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen sitting at the small table, sipping a cup of a tea and reading notes on some sort of smartphone he'd never seen before. Oh god, of course she's a redhead, John thought, as if I could ever resist a redhead... the thought drifted away suddenly as she looked up at him and smiled, her green eyes wide and clear. Oh. Oh bugger. And he looked a mess too...

"Hello, I'm Natasha. You must be John, Sherlock mentioned you'd be by. I was just reading your blog, Sherlock had told me about it."

"Oh, that silly thing," John said, smoothly pulling up a chair next to her at the table. "I'm afraid I haven't gotten a start on a new entry for some time. We haven't had much excitement lately. Well, until now I suppose. Mind telling me a little more about what's going on?" His eyes swept over her as she looked down to turn off her phone momentarily. Jesus, what wasn't perfect on her?

"I'm afraid I might have to tell you more than I want to eventually. Seems like this situation has gotten out of my hands. I work for S.H.I.E.L.D, a defence and research organization based primarily in America. It appears that your old friend Moriarty is involved with an old friend of ours, and together they're one of the more dangerous combinations of psychopaths I can think of. I might need your help gathering information on this Moriarty character, he managed to stay off the radar in the US somehow."

John nodded, blowing on his own tea before sipping it. "I'm not sure how much help we could be to somebody of your talents, but I'll do my best. Lord knows Sherlock and I are probably the only people alive to really know anything concrete about that bastard."

Natasha smiled at him, pushing a lock of hair behind one ear. "Trust me, I can use all the help I can get. I'm sort of on my boss's shit list at this point; I'm only just barely following protocol here. Then again, Director Fury isn't one for following the rules himself, really. Here's hoping I have a job after all this is said and done." God, Natasha thought, he's so... British! I thought guys in 'jumpers' with accents like this only existed in books! Total cutie though. Maybe she'd have at least a little fun before all this was through. How can him and Sherlock work together without killing each other?

The Doctor chose this moment to burst into the kitchen, as was his usual mode of entrance. "Good gracious, but that tea smells delicious! Any left for me?"

In the end, Natasha informed everybody present at Laurel and Sara's flat they'd be put up in a hotel in downtown London (courtesy of S.H.I.E.L.D, of course) for up to a couple of weeks for their own safety, and also so that they could assist S.H.I.E.L.D with the case at hand. Natasha was to be their primary contact, but Sara noticed that a lot of the seemingly normal staff and workers at the hotel held their hands to their ears briefly whenever she passed by. The Doctor had agreed to stick around and be available, but preferred to keep a bit of a distance; he was off in the TARDIS once again, visiting with Rose, but had given John, Laurel and Sara a number that he assured them he would always be available at. He had been suspicious to the extreme of all the S.H.I.E.L.D agents he met. Sara knew that the TARDIS files hadn't exactly been handed over on friendly terms, but she also knew that the organization considered the Doctor a "friendly" and not a foe.

Natasha had explained to the group at the flat that Loki had somehow escaped his prison on Asgard and made his way to earth with some sort of "battery" of Tesseract-based power, but upon arrival here, it had run out of juice. Moriarty was one of the most powerful criminal minds in the world, so it had made sense that the two had aligned forces. Loki still had his powers as a trickster god, but they weren't much use without the muscle and money that Moriarty provided on this planet. It appeared that Loki was after whatever it was that made the TARDIS tick; knowledge on the craft was scarce on all the worlds Loki had ever contacted, and it seemed that the Doctor had a fondness for earth. It was easiest to start here, even with the Avengers Initiative and S.H.I.E.L.D around. And if there was anything Loki always wanted more of, it was power. The TARDIS to him was the ultimate time-space machine; a way for him to troll around the universe with ease, and without the hassle of the unpredictable force of the Tesseract.


	8. Chapter 8

And so it was that Laurel found herself sitting on a plush king-sized bed at one of the better hotels in downtown London, brushing out her hair after a quick shower and badgering Sara about what the hell had happened to her in the way that only best friends could get away with. She narrowed her eyes as Sara sat on the bed across from her, flipping through the net on her iPhone.

"so let me get this straight, he just threw you in this nasty shower-room-thing and left you there the whole time? Dude, he seems way more sadistic than that, and he must have been trying to get _something_ out of you." She grimaced as she snagged the brush on a knot. "Ow. And besides, he seems pretty fucked up and evil, so I bet he's sexy as hell. Details, woman, you know I have problems!" Laurel flipped onto her stomach on the bed, chin rested on her hands, grinning madly at Sara.

Sara seemed to focus harder on her phone, but seeing the look on Laurel's face, she sighed, and, giving up, began to tell her the story of what had happened in the derelict room. Laurel listened wide eyed and smiling the whole time, gasping when Sara, face burning, told her what she and Loki had gotten up to shortly before Natasha came to the rescue. "I swear to god, I didn't even know what was happening until it happened! And yes, you pervert, he is sexy as hell. Dirty minded though... augh. Shit! Laurel, what the hell? What am I supposed to do now?"

"I don't really see that you have to do anything. You didn't give anything away, right? Seems he was too busy... uh... seducing you to even start with the interrogation. Sounds to me like he was drawing things out on purpose. Believe me, God of Asgard or no, he seems to be acting like a total guy to me. He thinks you're sexy. Then he acted on it, and now he knows your sexy. He's still sick and twisted, but now he's attracted to you on top of that. I bet Natasha knows a thing or two about using something like that to your advantage!"

"Laurel. Oh my God. You are so fucked up. You need a boyfriend, you know that?"

"Yeah well, show me a decent man around here and I'll act on my baser urges. We only just got to London, give a girl some time! Hahahaaaaaa, I can't believe this. You're usually such a good girl, and now you're messing around with the biggest bad boy on two planes of reality!"

"Whatever, I bet you think John is totally cute, you're always joking about snagging a doctor... hey wait. You're blushing, am I actually right for once?" Sara grinned, and hopped off her bed and directly onto Laurel's, making her yelp, and then laugh as they bounced before settling back down into shared cross-legged positions opposite each other. "Or is it Mr. Tall, Dark and Aspergers?"

"Swear to God dude, you're the only person I'd even admit to liking Sherlock to..."

"Annnnnd I'm right. As usual. So? Anything yet? C'mon, he's totally smart and right up your alley, you love them rail thin and weird. He fits the bill!"

"Yes, and he's a complete asshat. He tried making out with me once, and the minute John noticed, he blundered off and acted like nothing happened." Laurel briefly explained her night of ultimate awkwardness at the boy's flat, Sara giggling the whole time.

"Oh, oh god. Laurel. I'm so sorry, I know it's not funny. Yes it is. C'mon! I bet he's still into you. He's just an idiot. Like most guys, according to you, not that I'm the expert here..."

"You calling me a slut? Cuz it's true... but no, I dunno." Laurel fidgeted with the edge of the comforter, picking at a loose seam. "Even if he does still like me... this whole situation is too fucked up. I don't know if I even want to get involved with a guy like that under normal circumstances, nevermind this crazy-ass international intrigue stuff we're into now."

"Ugh, I suppose. True data, good sir. K, it's my turn in the shower. Did you get some dinner before we got carted off here?"

"No, I think I'm gonna go to the bar downstairs and have a drink with my food anyways. Lord knows I need one. I'll be back eventually, I plan on staying up as late as I want, seeing as I have a forced two-week vacation from work. See you in a bit, enjoy your shower."

Laurel wandered down the posh halls of the hotel, taking the mirrored elevator to the lobby level and getting directions to the dark and cozy bar that was attached to the hotel. Luckily for her, they served fantastic fish and chips to go with her very large, very stiff paralyzer. It was after two am and two more drinks that Laurel finally decided to wander up to her room for the night. Oh christ, maybe I shouldn't have made that last drink a double, she mused. As she stepped off the elevator at her floor, she walked directly into Sherlock, knocking them both to the ground. Sherlock made an odd gasping noise as he fell; she had knocked the wind out of him.

"Jesus, do you even look where you're going ever? I know you've got all this stuff going on in your _gigantic, superior_ brain, but this is just stupid... here, get up, c'mon." Laurel helped Sherlock sit and then stand up as the air made its way back into his lungs. "I'm sorry, I'm just... I'm tired. Of all of this."

"Oh believe me," Sherlock said a little breathlessly, "I am as well. The sooner I can get back on a case where I can work unimpeded, the better. This is all a little too official for me." He stopped talking suddenly, as though realizing how casual he was being with her. He looked down at her, opening his mouth, and then closing it again, searching for words to say he was sorry for what had happened at his flat... she frowned at him, and he quailed inwardly.

"Sherlock. Um. I get the idea you aren't good at this sort of... stuff. Attraction stuff. Am I right?"

Too dazed to speak, Sherlock nodded weakly.

"Ok. Well, listen. I'm not going to lie, I'm angry about how you... didn't handle what happened last night. But I, uh, I also still think you're really fantastic. Weird as hell, but fantastic. Um... I don't know where to go from here. This whole situation is balls, frankly."

Sherlock continued staring at her with a dazed look. "Do you always talk like this?"

"What do you mean?"

"You use so much slang. Do a lot of people of your calibre talk like that in Canada?"

"What do you mean, my calibre? Educated? Dare I say, good enough for somebody like you?" Laurel smiled up at him wickedly, quirking one eyebrow as she leaned against the wall.

Oh God, I've done it now, thought Sherlock, but I might not ever get another chance...

"I didn't mean it that way, I mean, I did, but not to say that you're low class or high class or anything like that... look, I've just never met somebody like you before. And you're lovely. I've no idea what to do to impress you." He shoved his hands in the pocket of his coat; it looked like he had been roaming the halls of the hotel only, as it wasn't wet from the still constant rain. "I like you," he stated simply, looking at her imploringly, "and I would like to kiss you right now."

Laurel looked surprised, the coy look vanishing from her face. "So kiss me, if you mean it."

Sherlock lunged at her, crushing her against the wall, causing a squeak of surprise to come out of Laurel. "Oh, I do." With that, he pressed his lips fiercely against hers.

Laurel pulled her mouth always from his demanding and all consuming lips. She took in a breath, feeling shocks of excitement and electricity from his hands on her body. Her knees felt weak, she tightened her hold on his surprisingly muscular arm. "Do you have a room?" she managed to breathlessly say.  
"Yes." He muttered, his mouth still caressing her soft skin, refusing to break contact with her. He wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her towards him, and slowly backing across the hall. "Pocket." He said.  
Laurel pulled herself out of her overwhelmingly erotic thoughts of his hands exploring her naked body to slowly reach into the pocket of his pants, causing him to moan. She pulled out the key card and slipped her arm under his, accessing the room.  
He hurriedly pushed the door open, and pulled her into the room after him. Through the darkness they stumbled, not able to part from each other's incessant touches as they made their way over to the king size bed.  
Knowing that the detective hadn't had much experience in these matters, for both their sakes Laurel decided to take matters into her own hands. She slowly pushed him down onto the bed, kneeling above him; she pulled her shirt up over her head and unhooked her bra, dropping the clothes to the floor. She took Sherlock's hands and placed them on her breasts. He seemed shocked at first but quickly fell into the motions and began to run his thumbs in circles around her nipples. He pushed his body up and brought his mouth to her right breast, running his tongue around her nipple piercing. Laurel's head rolled back, loving the feeling of him caressing her. She began to slowly unbutton his shirt, throwing it open so she could run her hands over his smooth pale skin. She used her finely manicured nails to gently scratch his chest.  
He groaned in pleasure, grabbing Laurel by her waist and throwing her down onto the bed. He climbed on top of her and loosened his belt as he unbuttoned his pants. He felt her squirming beneath him, clearly a form of pleading and need. He smiled and bent down trailing kisses from her collar bone to her ear, biting lightly at the lobe.  
He hooked his thumb into her jeans and slowly pulled them down, along with her underwear, discarding them on the floor. His hand slowly ran along her upper thigh, making its way between her legs. He felt the heat and her wetness; smiling as he slipped his dexterous fingers inside of her, feeling her body arching against his, and hearing the needing in her low moan. "Please." She whispered as her fingers found their way into his hair and pulled, bringing his lips to her mouth.  
Laurel's entire body felt shaky and tense. She had to have him inside of her, all of him. Her breathing was ragged as she slipped one of her hands down his pants and found him hard. She wrapped her hand around his shaft, pleased when she heard his near grunt of surprise and lust.  
He slowly pulled his fingers out from her, hearing a soft whimper from her as he did so; he slowly licked the space between her breasts and kissed her chin and swollen lips, positioning himself on top of her. He felt her hips press against his, wanting and waiting. He pushed his pants down and she guided him into her, a loud moan of satisfaction and pleasure uttering from her mouth, into his.  
He pushed into her, and excruciatingly slowly pulled out, feeling her nails dig into his back as he did so. He repeated the process several times, until he heard her almost angrily whisper his name in frustration. Immediately he plunged into her, filling her deeply. She gasped as his speed increased, almost relentless. Together they moved in synchronicity feeling completely consumed by each other, ignorant to anything else.  
Laurel's legs began to tense underneath him as she felt something building up inside of her. Her breath increased, becoming shallower, as her eyes rolled back. Sherlock placed his lips against her neck, as he continued to thrust into her, and kissed her soft skin muttering her name; the vibrations of his voice pleading against her pulse caused her to fall over the edge, exploding and coming apart around him. He quickly followed suit, calling her name out again as he finished.  
He collapsed on the bed beside her; she turned onto her side and laid her head against his chest, feeling completely spent. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt this tired. She let out a deep and very satisfied breath and immediately fell asleep next to her detective.

Sara walked out of the bathroom, her wet hair brushed back slick to her head. She grabbed her rose pink cotton nightie and quickly slipped it on, dropping the towel to the floor. She walked over to the balcony doors, enjoying the feeling of the plush carpet beneath her feet, grateful that it wasn't dirty cement littered with shattered tiles. She pulled back the binds and opened the door, letting in the cool London breeze. The smell of rain constantly on the air, she stepped out onto the wrought iron balcony and looked out onto the city. The buildings were nothing but shadows against the dark clouds, the only lights coming from the buildings and streetlights below. She looked down to the ground, her room was at least twenty two stories up. She ran a hand through her hair, shaking the strands apart as she did so. She turned and walked back into the hotel room, grabbing her iPod and headphones. She turned on her Nirvana album and smiled as she reached into her purse, pulling out a purple, white, pink and orange stripped sock. She slowly pushed the contents out of the sock and onto the bed. A black rectangular tin, a pipe and a lighter fell out. She opened the tin and filled the pipe with only some of, the nearly full ziplock bag, of marijuana. Putting the pipe to her lips and flicking on the lighter she took a deep hit, blowing the smoke out the open door. She leaned back against her pillow, finally feeling safe.  
She looked down at her hand, Natasha had been fairly certain that it wasn't infected—however it still looked like shit, even after her shower. The skin looked as though she'd used a piece of sandpaper to rip through it. It was still a dark shade of pink, purple and even grey. She took another hit, trying to get her mind off of what had happened to her. "Thank God for drugs." She muttered; smoke cascading from her mouth as she did so.  
She was determined to forget and be in a state of pure bliss, even if she had to smoke the entire bag of weed.

"Hello?" Natasha answered her cell phone, putting down the gun she'd been cleaning.

"I see a few shadows." The male voice said, jumping right to the point.

Natasha quickly assembled her gun, and placed it back into her holster. "Where and how many, exactly?"

"Five. Four of them have sniper guns, all located on the rooftop across from the hotel, to the east."

"Right across from Sara's room." Natasha muttered, as she heaved her black bag over her shoulder and began to leave the room. "Are they really idiotic enough to act on this tonight?" Her voice almost sounded annoyed.

The voice on the other end of the phone chuckled, "I doubt that, they're in position but none of them seem to be aiming at any sort of target. Maybe this was just a search and respond?" he guessed. "They're all within range; do you want me to take them out?"

Natasha laughed, "No, let them sit there, if they make a move then you can take them out. For now we'll just do an extraction." She left the lights in her room on as she exited, walking down the hall. "Do you think this could turn into Budapest?"

"You and I have very different opinions on what happened in Budapest." He said, laughing. "Do the extraction and then send me the signal so I can get out of the cold. Damn, England is freezing.

"Unlike Budapest." This time she didn't get an answer, only a laugh as the line was disconnected. She shook her head in amusement and pocketed her phone.  
She ran the rest of the way down the hall, using a key card to let herself in Sara's room, who she found, sitting on her bed, blowing smoke in the general direction of the open balcony doors. Her eyes were wide and watery.

"Oh...hey, Natasha." She said; smoke expelling from her mouth as she did so. Natasha gave her a stern look. "What?!" Sara cried out, holding the pipe and lighter up in defence. "You saw my urine test, this shouldn't be a surprise to you—and can you blame me? The last few days have been...icky." she said, laughing slightly. "Icky..." she replied, finding the word hilarious.

"We have to go." Natasha said, rolling her eyes in slight amusement. She was very aware of Sara's past time hobbies, not really caring, seeing as Tony was probably the biggest pothead she knew. She put her bag down and began to pack up the few things Sara had strewn about the room.

"Where are we going?" Sara asked as she stood up and walked towards the door, with the intention of dumping the ashes out on the balcony.

"STOP!" Natasha cried, somersaulting over the bed, and grabbing Sara's arm. "Do not go in front of the door."

"Is someone here?!" Sara cried out, her happy high quickly turning to a paranoid one. "Oh my God, is it HIM?! Is he coming back for me?! Fuck—no! I can't fucking...hahaha...fuck." She muttered. Good Lord, she thought to herself, how high am I? How many bowls did I have? She started counting on her fingers...hmm, she probably should've said no to that forth one.

Natasha pulled the headphones off Sara's head, disconnecting them from the iPod, and threw everything into Sara's purse, including her sock, pipe, weed and lighter. "Don't worry; we got part of our backup today."

"Part of our backup?" Sara asked. "What does that mean?" Suddenly her mouth dropped, "Is the hulk outside?" she questioned.

Natasha smiled, "No, Banner is still in New York with Stark, they're going to be a little late to the game this time." She took Sara by the wrist and walked out of the room. "I have another safe house."

"What about Laurel?" Sara demanded, realizing that her friend was still at the bar, as far as she knew. "God, that girl can drink! How long has she been shooting back some type of gross vodka, or whatever it is that she drinks?"

Natasha shook her head. "Don't worry about her. She bumped into the detective on her way back to your room; she'll be safe with him for the night."

Sara burst out laughing. "Tall-dark-and-aspergers got his sex on tonight!" she cried out. "We're only in London for a week and look at us! A slut and a near rape victim! Go Canada! Woo!" She cried out, maybe a little too loudly down the hall.  
Natasha immediately stopped walking and spun around, her face nearly touching Sara's. "Oh, hello." Sara said, "You're close." She took a step away from her assassin friend. "Personal bubble, and all that, don't take offence." She explained, not wanting Natasha to think she was disgusted by her...she really should've not had that forth bowl.

"What do you mean 'near rape?" She asked, her eyes becoming wide in horror.

"What?" Sara asked, clearly forgetting what she had said only moments ago. "Near rape?" She questioned, and then laughed, her train of thought having gone to the hilarious book title 'the naked ape'. "It almost rhymes." She mused.

"How much did you smoke?!" Natasha asked, realizing that she could barely talk to Sara. She grabbed her cell phone and pressed speed dial number one.

"Are you out?" the same male voice on the other end answered.

"Not yet, and something has come up."

"What now?"

"Sara is a little...unresponsive."

"So you need the man to come in and carry her out?" The voice jokingly asked.

Natasha rolled her eyes and began to pull Sara towards the stairs. "We're a billion floors up! And I'm lazy!" Sara cried, "You can't seriously make me go down all these stairs."

"Yep, spy protocol." Natasha said.

Sara scoffed at her, "Look what your spy protocol did to my hand."

"She sounds fine to me." The voice said, still on the phone.

"Meet me at the safe house in an hour. This entire operation may have just gotten a little more serious then we thought."

"Alright, see you there." They both hung up.

"Who was that?" Sara asked in a singsong voice. "Was it _him_?" when she didn't get an answer from Natasha she smiled knowing that she was indeed correct, "Clint is here! I can't wait to meet him. He was captured by Loki too; we clearly have a lot in common...although I'm really hoping his time with Loki was a lot different than mine."

"Want to talk about that?" Natasha asked, hoping that stoned Sara would be more willing to divulge the information. "About what happened to you when you were with him?" She saw Sara pale slightly.

"No thank you, I'd much rather eat...do you have any chocolate on you? I used to work at a candy store in my glory days."

"Sara, you are only in your mid twenties." Natasha reminded her, as they continued to make their way down the stairs.

Sara shook her head, "That is true. But still I feel old...old and hungry...violated, disgusted—not at anyone but myself though." She let out a deep sigh, "Let's go get a drink. I think I need a drink...and chocolate."

"We'll open some wine when we get to the safe house." Natasha promised.

Sara nodded, "Sounds like a plan."


	9. Chapter 9

_She walks towards him, only half lit, the gloom seeming throw her curves into more dramatic shapes, almost serpentine... he realizes she is naked. He is naked as well. His breath catches in his throat. He can see the light glinting off the white-blonde of her hair, making her eyes dark holes in a face graced by a knowing, seductive smile. Loki feels himself smiling back. His eyes drink in her form, he can see the small tattoo of a rose on her inner ankle, she smells of roses as she approaches him..._

 _She reaches him, stops with her face an inch from his chest, looks up at him, but doesn't touch him. He feels himself grow hard as he stares at her, feels his hands rising to her skin of their own volition. He contacts her hips and it's like an electric shock travels through her and into him; she gasps, her eyes go wider but never leave his, her lips part as she breathes in deeply._

 _His hands slide up her sides and encircle her, crushing her form to his, skin-to-skin contact searing up and down their bodies. He can feel his erection pressed against her stomach, and he moans, bends to kiss her. Her hands come alive, shooting up to grab his head at the base of his skull, crushing his lips to hers as she pushes hard against him, grinds herself against his cock. Oh god, he needs to be inside her...she's leaning against him, he's got his back to the wall, he feels weak in the knees from the lust pounding through his body. His hands find their way to her ass, grabbing hard, lifting her up against him as he moves away from the wall to fall to his knees, dragging them both to the ground. It feels like his body is on fire, like he can't stop what's lit and is now consuming him._

 _He keeps kissing her as their arms and legs entangle, she bites his lip and he pulls his face away long enough to see the look on her face as he repositions and pushes himself into her hard and sudden. She moans as her eyes roll back in her head, and the sound of her in complete ecstasy makes him almost lose it, then and there... he begins to thrust, hard and fast, letting his weight grind into her, one arm wrapped around her, the other cradling her head, his hand tangled in her hair, tugging in rhythm with his thrusting. He can't stop watching her face, taking pleasure in every gasp and hitch in her breath, every whispered "please" and "more". He can feel his orgasm building, feels how tight she is inside all around his length..._

Loki awoke suddenly, confused and aroused beyond belief. Gods in Asgard... what was _that_? He thought to himself groggily. He tried to roll over, get up out of his bed, but he was too tangled in his covers, and instead managed to wriggle to the edge of the huge four poster he had installed in the only room of their safe house worthy of being his lodgings for now. Writhing, he managed to sit up and get his feet on the freezing cold tile floor, shocking himself further awake and away from the dream.

Untangling an arm, he scrubbed his face with his free hand and ran it through his hair, staring out the window at the full moon that seemed to hang close enough for him to reach and snatch it out of the sky. Asgard had no moon; it was one of the few things he was fascinated by on this wretched planet, its cycle of waxing and waning, a bright disc hanging in the darkness, disrupting his favourite cover; nighttime. At least it was a lovely disruption. Like Sara...

He let himself lay back on the bed, his feet still on the ground; he knew what his problem was. The girl. Little Spy. Sara. Had his men found her yet? She'd be damn near impossible to extract now... Loki had become consumed by thoughts of her. He seemed to have lost almost all interest in the TARDIS, much to Moriarty's dismay. Not much that shit can do about it, he thought to himself. I am a god, I will do as I please in this realm, that blue box has waited almost a thousand years, it can wait a little more. I'll have both, and Moriarty be damned. Loki smiled as he curled back up into his bedsheets, falling asleep with visions of Sara flitting through his mind.

Sara stared out the window of the armoured car almost vacantly, gazing up at the full moon. It seemed huge to her fuzzed out brain. Shiny... the car hit a bump, jerking her out of her stupor. She fell against Natasha, giggling softly. Natasha rolled her eyes. God, I thought Tony got silly... the girl is completely out of it! What happened to make her want a high this badly?

"Sara."

"Yeeeesssss, Natasha?" Sara smiled goofily up at the spy, leaning on her shoulder, eyes wide and innocent as was possible, given the situation.

"Maybe once you've come down a bit, we can talk about what happened... you seem stressed out by it. Talking might help. If it doesn't, I'm here and I can make sure you're ok."

Sara could feel herself starting to spiral down out of the high; she seemed to have reached a point where she was coherent, if not completely sensical. "Natasha... weird stuff happened. I, um, I don't think you'd approve, and I will not talk about it in a spy car all bugged to the nines with... bugs? And such. Wine first?"

Natasha smiled down at Sara. "Sure. Wine first. And I can promise you that you can talk to me in confidence. Really. I work for people other than Director Fury, remember."

The car slowed as it pulled into a long driveway, lined with hedges; Sara hadn't even paid attention to where they were going. The safe house was apparently some sort of rather ritzy estate. Natasha was amused by the look of awe on Sara's face when the house came into view; it was Victorian, beautifully restored, and bigger than any house she had ever seen. "Tony bought this place as a 'summer home' for when he visits friends in the area. Pays to have rich friends, doesn't it?" Sara could only nod dumbly.

Once they were led inside by large, anonymous looking men in immaculate suits, Sara and Natasha were immediately shown to a large library of some sort, ensconced in comfy chairs, and told to enjoy their stay. Sara was lost in her marijuana haze, staring at all the books on the walls. It was dim and cozy in the library, with rich Persian carpets and a fireplace at one end of the room, emitting waves of heat that seemed the perfect thing to ward off the damp of the incessant rain. As if by magic, another anonymous suit appeared with a large bottle of deeply ruby red wine, and two delicate stemmed glasses. Leaving these on the table, he melted out of the room discretely as Natasha leaned over, pour the wine as she glanced at Sara.

"So." Natasha sipped her wine delicately, enjoying the rich perfume of it before swallowing.

"Want to talk about what happened with Loki?"

Sherlock came awake slowly, swimming up through a deep, groggily pleasant sleep into the waking world. The sound of the incessant rain on the windows of his hotel room reached his ears; he smiled, enjoying the white-noise pattering, and moved to stretch his legs out straight whilst simultaneously pulling his arms above his head.

He jerked awake suddenly as the motion of his arms was impeded by the woman lying in them. Dear God, it hadn't been a dream! He felt ecstatic... and then a bolt of terror shot through him. She had obviously been drinking at the bar before they met; what if she regretted what had happened? What if she felt that he had taken advantage of her? He stared desperately at her still sleeping face, gone calm and relaxed in a deep sleep. As he watched, her eyelids fluttered, and she came awake to him staring her in the eye.

Laurel started, and then relaxed against him, remembering where she was and what had happened last night. A lazy smile made its way across her face as she snuggled in closer to the detective, making him gasp as she shoved her cold feet against his legs. She laughed softly, but didn't pull away. "Sorry about that, but I'm always cold! Hope you're a bit of a furnace, it's nice to have somebody warm to sleep next to." Laurel's gaze traveled back to his, trying to read his expression. He seemed... stunned? Oh god, I hope it's a good stunned, not a 'get the hell out, why are you still here?' stunned...

"Um, I can uh, take off, if you want... I know some people don't sleep well with me snoring away next to me, if you need some rest..."

"I don't intend on getting out of this bed until at least noon, and as your legs are now tangled in mine, I don't see that you'll be able to leave much before that either."

"Oh. I mean, good! Awesome. Good." Laurel felt herself start to blush, and covered it up by snuggling closer into Sherlock's chest. He smelled of rain and wet wool, probably from his heavy coat, which he had flung unceremoniously across the room the night before. As her arms tightened around his torso, she felt his arms tightening around her. Good so far.

"I had a good night. A really wonderful night. Can we do that again soon?"

"We'll be doing it again tonight, so long as we aren't out and about on the case. I get the feeling our friend Natasha isn't going to let us much out of her sight... I'm sure I can work a way out for us, however."

"Sherlock! You bad boy! You're going to try and escape the clutches of an international spy?"

"I'm not. We are. And we are most certainly going to succeed, even spies are trained to look for patterns and people who stick out. I assure you that there will be somebody she isn't looking for, so that's who we'll be. I also intend to take you out for dinner. Proper dinner."

Laurel looked up at him questioningly. "Are you sure you won't get bored with me? I doubt we have much in common to talk about...not that you seem like the talking type..."

He smiled down at her. Oh wow, she thought, he needs to do that more often. At this close a range. Wow.

"Even if you aren't as brilliant as me, you're at least willing to learn. Perhaps you'll learn a thing or two over dim sum."

It was at this exact moment that the hotel room door beeped to announce the use of the key card to open the lock. John Watson breezed in, obviously expecting to find Sherlock alone.

"Sherlock, are you still asleep, that isn't like you! Listen, I don't think Natasha is here right now, her little minions won't let me..." the words died in his throat as he took in the room around him, his eyes finally wandering from the scattered clothes to the pair in the bed. He smiled, suddenly and widely.

"Good lord, you two, tied one on last night, did we?"

Sara sat in the plush chair in front of the roaring fireplace, located to the far right of the library. She had a glass of wine in one hand and was clutching a very old edition of Hamlet to her chest. "The Dane would know exactly what to do in this situation." She muttered to herself, taking a small sip of wine. "He'd just kill everyone and then die accidentally himself...what am I talking about?"

Natasha arched an eyebrow, "Sara, if anyone can understand what Loki can accomplish with only a few words it's me, whatever he put you through, you can tell me."

Sara rolled her eyes, and turned her gaze towards the frosted windows, seeing only darkness and beads of raindrops continuously dripping down the pane. Suddenly she put her glass down. "Jarvis?" she asked aloud, wondering if her theory was correct.

"Yes ?" A polite British voice answered her.

Sara smiled, "You don't run on power, do you?" she already knew the answer from the information she'd been given upon being hired by the Avengers Director.

"No, Ms. I am run by an arc reactor."

"Which means that your energy in endless, regardless of any blackout or anything to that effect." She concluded.

"Yes." The voice answered. "Unless something were to shut down the arc reactor, but even then I am to be rerouted to the reactor located in New York which would power me for at least a year before another was placed here in England. Would you like me to patch you through to so you two can talk about this amongst yourselves?"

"No, thank you." Sara said, and then added, "One more thing, you run all of the security clearances and procedures in this house?"

"Indeed I do, and my counterparts take care of all security measures at Stark Industries in New York, Los Angeles and also the other Stark residences'."

"Thank you very much, Jarvis. That will be all." Sara said, dismissing the robotic system. She looked back to Natasha, putting her glass down, wishing that she had a joint, she was slowly coming down from her high and felt as though that last conversation was far too clear than she had wanted it to be. "There you are. You need Tony to install another Jarvis at the archives. It's the only way we'll be able to better protect everything in there."

Natasha frowned, putting her wine glass down on the table located between her and Sara. "Someone broke in." She mused out loud. "They broke in and then took you, which means that they wanted you to decipher something for them." She nodded, accepting this new information. "We thought that you were taken so they could more easily gain access to the archives."

"You're joking right?" She arched an eyebrow, "Laurel, Sherlock and the Doctor managed to get in within minutes—do you seriously think a God and a criminal mastermind can't manage to sneak in?" she laughed and began to flip through Hamlet, not paying attention to any of the words. "No, they had what they wanted when they took me." She looked up at Natasha, "Why did you choose me to be your archivist?"

"You were qualified." She replied.

"I had a certificate from a college, not a master's degree from a university." Sara took a breath and put the book down, picking the wine glass back up and taking a large sip from it, not bothering to taste it. "You hired me because I was interested in everything the Avengers Initiative did. I was obsessed with it. Every aspect; I had an odd unique knowledge on, which surprised even Director Fury. After you gave me access to the files and archives I was obsessed, I know more about the Avengers that even you do." She said. Whatever was left of the drugs in her system had turned from silliness to a dark kind of clarity. She knew what she was saying, she knew she had to be honest, and this was the only time she could do it. She was just stoned enough that it gave her courage for what she had to admit. "I was compromised specifically because Loki knew that I knew everything he didn't."

"Alright, you're right." Natasha decided to be completely honest as well, knowing that it would be the only way that Sara would open up to her. "At first we were suspicious of you, but when we did all the background checks we knew that you had to work for us, you knew too much to just be left to your own devices."

"I was more of a pawn then a worker. You caged me in the archives in the form of a job, knowing that this way I could keep all my knowledge to myself and only use it for your own purposes. I'd be a danger to your initiative if anyone else had gotten to me." She said, nodding her head. She'd always suspected this, but never voiced it out loud. Having Natasha sitting across from her giving her a sullen look...she knew that she'd been right. She was more of a prisoner of the Avengers than an actual co-worker or part of the team. It was an illusion built for a sad bookish girl who knew too much. "You're lucky that I was so excited about this job and to be part of the team that I didn't tell Loki anything. I listened to everything you taught me and kept all your secrets."

Natasha looked down at the carpet beneath her chair. "I'm sorry. You're right. That's how it started, but Sara, you have to believe that I do really like you, as a friend. I volunteered to come and save you; it wasn't about saving you before you gave up any information, it was about saving you because I didn't want anything horrible to happen to you."

"Firstly!" Sara snapped, "That may have been _your_ intention, but the only reason you were allowed to come get me was because Fury didn't want to risk me telling Loki anything. Secondly, you hardly got to me in time." She sneered, drinking the rest of her wine and placing the glass on the table.

"What did he say to you?" Natasha's eyes were wide in sorrow. She'd never seen Sara like this, it upset her. Whatever had happened was bad, worse than she had originally thought.

"You think you'll understand?" Sara asked.

Natasha nodded, "He's horrible, his words are toxic and are enough to rip you apart inside."

Sara started to laugh, at first it was a light chuckle, and then a dark almost maniacal laughter. "If only he'd used his words." She muttered. She leaned towards Natasha. "He threw me down onto my knees, holding me in place, and then he continued to fuck my mouth."

Natasha was frozen in horror. She hadn't any idea of what to say to Sara. Never had she thought Loki would ever do something like that. He was so repulsed by the human race, there was just no way...but it would make sense with how Sara had been acting. Natasha shook her head slightly, trying to disperse her cluttered thoughts and trying to make sense of all of this.

"So now you know." She stood up and looked down at her friend, who was still too shocked to answer. "That's not even the worst part." She said, figuring that she had come this far, there was no stopping her now. "The worst thing is that I enjoyed it. Not only am I compromised, and no longer caged in the archives, but I'm sure you can run back to Fury and let him know that I might be a double agent, because I loved sucking Loki's cock. You can lock me up in a jail forever." She began to walk out of the room, but suddenly turned around and grabbed the nearly full bottle of red wine. "I'm very thirsty all of a sudden." She said, and then stormed out of the room, leaving Natasha staring at the empty chair, still not knowing if she could actually believe what Sara had just told her.


	10. Chapter 10

"We have to go find them!" Laurel insisted, as she excited the bathroom, dressed and squeaky clean.

"Don't be silly." Sherlock said, as she wrapped his scarf around his neck. "She's with the Widow and whoever else she called in for backup. Sara is fully protected and if we just go out and find them we'll be putting ourselves in their line of fire."

"Sara's my friend!"Laurel said, clearly pissed, she glared at Sherlock.

"And bringing you two back together for a second time will only put you in danger of Moriarty and Loki." He fought back, trying not to wither under her angry stare. There wasn't a single woman he'd ever met who affected him the way she did, but he'd be damned if he let her prance back over to her friend who was clearly mixed up in beyond the wrong group.

"So you want me to just leave her in the line of fire!?" Laurel shot back, using his words against him.

John stepped between them, "Come on you two, you were making the beast with two backs only a few short hours ago, how about we make friends and try to figure out a solution to—"

"The solution is to go out for dinner tonight and try to accept that this case is none of our business." Sherlock cut him off.

John shrugged, "Dinner would be good and I know this great place that—"

"Don't be foolish, Jawn!" Sherlock said, refusing to let him end one sentence, "you're not invited. This dinner is for two."

"A date?" John asked, looking completely shocked. "A date." He said again, confidence in his voice this time, and then he started laughing, " _You're_ going on a date?" Sherlock rolled his eyes, refusing to answer the doctor. "I was wondering why you were so keen on taking Mycroft's advice and stepping back from this case, but it all makes sense now." He said, looking at Laurel and giving her a warm smile.

She smiled back. "Dinner does sound nice..." She admitted.

"What?" Sherlock looked shocked, and turned towards John, "How did you do that? She was angry only seconds ago!" he was completely in awe of John's powers of being able to calm women down in times of stress and anger.

John looked at the floor, shaking his head, "We'll have a talk later, and until then...you'll just have to try to get the hang of it."

"I'll help out where I can." Laurel volunteered. "I've had a lot of practice with first timers."

Sherlock looked at her suspiciously, feeling something he'd never felt before. It wasn't quite anger or annoyance, more anxious and almost afraid...was this jealousy? "Lots of practice? How much practice?"

Laurel fidgeted awkwardly, "Rule number one, do not ask a woman the morning after how much sex she's had."

"Well, this has been sufficiently uncomfortable." John said.

"You held up well." Laurel congratulated him.

"Yes, well it's the British in me. We do very well in horribly awkward positions. Give me a cup of tea and I'll quietly sit by while a couple has a very nasty row." He admitted.

"Tea, that sounds good." Laurel said. "Let's go get some...at wherever Sara is."

Sherlock let out a groan, "We've already talked about this we are not—"

"Rule number two!" Laurel said, grabbing his scarf and pulling him close to her. "The woman is always right." She gave him as light kiss on the lips, clearly leaving him yearning for more. "I promise we can go for dinner tonight after we visit with Sara and Natasha and make sure they're ok."

"Natasha?" John said. "Oh, yes, that sounds like a splendid plan. I agree with her."

Sherlock let out a deep sigh, knowing that he could never convince both of them, when they had such odd gleeful looks on their faces. "Fine. We will go and check how this troublesome girl is and then we will leave."

"She's my best friend, not a troublesome girl." Laurel said, vowing to attempt to make Sherlock like Sara...but then realized Sara didn't seem like much of a fan of the detective. "She's not overly pleased by you either, come to think about it." She said, hoping to force Sherlock to spark and interest in her.

"Most people don't like me." He said, with a nonchalant shrug. "I couldn't care less."

Laurel began to walk towards the hotel door, dragging Sherlock behind her by his scarf. "Rule number three, if you want in my pants you has to make nice with my friends."

"But...what?!" Sherlock looked to John who nodded, proving Laurel to be correct. "Fine." He hissed, "I'll try."

"Laurel turned around and gave him another kiss. "Good boy, she's been through a lot and doesn't deserve to have an angry detective who doesn't like her roaming around fucking her friend." She bit his lip as she pulled away from yet another kiss. "Now use your sexy detective ways to find them." She ushered him forward, in front of her, slapping his ass as he passed her. He tensed, not knowing how to react, she and John only laughed.

"I regret everything at the moment." He said, wishing that he was in on Laurel and John's little normal human jokes.

"You'll catch on." John promised, pressing the elevator button to go down. "Until then, I'll be very entertained."

Sara woke up in the morning to the sunlight slanting through the blinds of the bedroom she had run into last night. She immediately wished she hadn't finished that bottle of wine all on her own. Clutching her head and moaning softly, she rolled onto her side and into the fetal position, hoping that she could fall asleep until this pounding headache passed. Perhaps she could call for some water and an aspirin, or something, anything to get rid of the feeling of hammers marching on her skull.

"Oh man, do I ever know that feeling. Trust me, it never gets easier. Best to give up on that stuff altogether and stick to the green."

Sara sat up in the bed, almost falling over as she looked all around the room. Big mistake... she fell back towards the pillows, whimpering and clutching her head ever harder as she screwed her eyes shut. "Who are you? Who's there?" She managed to gasp.

As she slowly opened her eyes, she found a man dressed in an all-black outfit that seemed athletic in an off-hand sort of way standing over her, smiling down at her in the bed. He had a quiver of arrows strapped to his back, but he wasn't holding a bow in his hands at the moment. So this is Clint, she thought to herself, the famous Hawkeye. He looked into her eyes, his own filled with a compassion she hadn't been expecting from one of the more bad-ass assassins on the planet.

"Heard you had a bit of a ride these last few days. Seems we have something in common."

Sara snorted, turning her head away from Clint as she started to blush. "Trust me, the only thing we have in common is meeting Loki. After that, things start to take a definitely different path."

"I'm not so sure about that. He used us both pretty bad... I still can't think for too long about all the things I did when I was under his control. It doesn't matter to me that he had me under that spell, or whatever it was. I should have been able to stop myself. I'm Hawkeye, dammit."

Sara rolled back over to face him, propping herself up on one elbow, a surprised look on her face. Was it really still affecting him that much? "Natasha must have told you what I did, though..."

"As I see it, you didn't have much choice in the matter. What would he have done to you if you said no? Probably something worse. And so what if you enjoyed it. We can't help it when our bodies go renegade on us sometimes. I enjoy every shot I take with my bow, and yeah, I enjoyed every kill I made whilst under Loki's spell. Even the ones I felt horrible about afterwards. I still liked the killing part. Always have. I'm sorta fucked up that way. So don't feel too badly about what happened."

Sara sat up in the bed slowly as Clint made his way to a chair in the corner by the door, seating himself and leaning forward so he wouldn't crush his arrows. She felt herself blushing from the frankness of their conversation, but did her best to shake it off and ignore it. "Did Natasha send you here to talk to me?"

"No, actually. She talked to me about what happened last night and I told her I was going to come talk to you in the morning. She's been through a different sort of hell with Loki than us two. He was behind a thick glass wall the whole time he was torturing her; he had his hands on us more directly. Um, moreso on you, so to speak..." he coughed and looked down slightly, as if noticing his hands for the first time today. "... still. I don't want you to feel terrible anymore, if you can help it. Try to move on. Learn from what happened. Who knows? Maybe you can use Loki's obvious liking for you to our advantage. You'd be great as bait now if we needed to lure him out."

"That sounds an awful lot like work for a spy to me, not a lonely librarian."

"You did pretty damn good for a librarian when you got captured."

Sara smiled, despite her pounding head. "We're being pretty forward with each other for our first time meeting."

"The way I see it, may as well get the awkward crap out of the way first when you meet somebody you know some strange stuff about. We both know strange stuff about each other, and now we've talked about it, so it should be easy-peasy to get up and go to a very late breakfast with Natasha. She's waiting for us in the dining room, if you'd like to join us in a bit."

Sara grimaced at the thought of seeing Natasha after how last night had gone, but nodded all the same. May as well get it out of the way. Clint's right about that much, she thought to herself.

"Sure. Give me a bit to get myself put together and I'll come down."


	11. Chapter 11

Loki woke up to the sun peeking through a slit in the curtains of his bed; gods, he hated the sun here, it was too weak, too yellow. Why did he even bother with this realm? Some days he wondered. Stretching languidly, he sat up and threw the curtains aside, stepping out of the bed and gracefully padding over to the nightstand where he kept a large cut-glass bottle of Midgardian whiskey. What was it Moriarty had said? "It's five o'clock somewhere, your eminence, may as well start a morning off right." Despite being clever, Loki wasn't sure how much longer he could keep the criminal mastermind around before he started to cause trouble. It was obvious that he was getting bored; a dangerous thing for a mind like that. Pulling the stopper out of the neck of the bottle, he took a large swig, shuddering and then relaxing as he felt the warmth of the alcohol start to radiate out from his stomach.

Priorities. I need to re-think my priorities. Sipping more genteely at the bottle now, Loki walked over to the window, peered out it at the ruined grounds of the abandoned asylum he had made his base of operations. Romania had plenty of half-forgotten leftover places like this from the Cold War era; bless Communism and the American need to wipe it out for giving me a little chaos to work with, he mused.

Priorities! I must focus, he thought angrily to himself. Taking one last pull at the bottle, he stoppered it and placed it on the windowsill, settling down into an old, comfortable chair he had brought in from the library of the asylum. Loki leaned back and closed his eyes, breathing evenly, trying to figure out his next move. Did he go after the box, or the girl? Was there a way he could get both in one swoop? He knew that the Detective and his little friends had some sort of access to The Doctor. His sources had been able to tell him as much. Perhaps some sort of ransom could be worked out? He saw himself easily wearing out Sara; perhaps he'd want to give her up eventually, and that could be used to his advantage. Then again... what if he decided to keep her?

Sara.

The woman had thrown a wrench in his plans of an easy acquisition of the TARDIS files. He had expected a weeping librarian... and he had gotten much more than that. She seemed... electric, somehow. Strong enough to face him, and yet still so exquisitely delicate and breakable. And yet, she hadn't broken. Not even with the way he'd used her. He needed to get her alone once more.

Perhaps once the girl was in his grasp, he could focus on the blue box once again. Everybody needed a little pleasure, didn't they? Better to have some form of relaxation than to go on angry as sin simply because of the wretchedness of this realm he had to navigate for his goals. Little Spy first. TARDIS later. She would make a welcome distraction in this dreary existence here in the backwaters of Romania. He smiled as he turned away from the window and back to the bed. A nap, however, was at the top of his list. Sleeping, he had decided, was truly his worst vice.

Perhaps he would dream of her...

Sara made her way down the stairs, clean and dressed—but she still felt nauseous and her headache raged on. She stopped just outside of the dining room and took a deep breath, regardless of how understanding both Natasha and Clint were she still felt horrible, and nothing they could do or say would fix that. She gathered her courage and walked into the room seeing both of the assassins look up.

"How are you feeling?" Natasha asked; there were tones of sympathy in her voice.

"Like I've been run down by a smart car." Sara replied, taking a seat at the table and pouring herself some water, knowing her stomach couldn't handle anything else. She looked up and saw that both Natasha and Clint were awkwardly looking away from her. She rolled her eyes, "So what are we going to do about Loki?"

A look of relief crossed Natasha's face; glad to be talking about something she knew more about, "We don't quite know yet. We're still trying to assemble everyone, but when we do we'll have to figure out a plan of action."

"We know that he's looking for the TARDIS." Clint said, "So all we need to do is keep the Doctor away from here and we should be fine." He shrugged and took a bite of his toast. "He's the only one who knows anything about his phone box, so we should be in the clear for that." He muttered, between chewing.

"Uh…yeah…" Sara said, looking intently at the carpet beneath her chair.

"Sara, is there something else you'd like to tell us?" Natasha asked, putting her cup of coffee down onto the table, so she could offer all of her attention to the conversation.

Sara took a small sip of her water, feeling the liquid sliding its way down into her churning stomach. "I may know a little more about the TARDIS then I probably should."

Clint raised a questioning eyebrow, "Oh? How much do you know?"

Sara let out a breath, thinking for a moment, and then said, "I know the history of the machine, I know that it's the only one left; not only because of the Time War but also because it's an older model—the rest were decommissioned and replaced before the war began. I know that it takes six pilots to fly it properly, the Doctor managed to reprogram it with odds and ends so that he can fly it alone, but the original controls are still intact. I also know what kind of fuel it runs off of and I know where the heart of it lies…and…" She trailed off when she noticed that both Clint and Natasha were staring open mouthed at her. "And that sums most of it up…sort of…?"

Clint was the first to react, "We should've sent her away with the Doctor."

"Not funny." Sara muttered, not really wanting to trade one path of danger and death for another. She was very well aware of how dangerous travelling with the Doctor was. "I read a lot." She said as a means to explain how she knew so much about the TARDIS. "What do you want from me, I'm a librarian!...tech."

Natasha shook her head, "Well if we were even thinking of the prospect of using her as bait for Loki that idea is out, she knows far too much about the TARDIS to just dangle her in front of him—without the rest of the team that is."

Clint shook his head, "Even if the team was here I don't know if I would risk it. She knows more than any other SHIELD operative about it."

"Alright, we have to rethink our options." Natasha took her cell phone out of her pocket, "I'll get a hold of the team and let them know."

"Wait, an actual option was to use me as bait?" Sara asked, too shocked to be completely horrified.

Clint gave her one of his charming smiles, "We wouldn't let him get to you, don't worry, Natasha and I were going to have everything under control, and if we do end up going through with that possible plan we'll be sure to have all the Avengers here, so that way nothing could possibly go wrong."

"Not going to lie, Clint, that doesn't\t offer me much comfort." Sara admitted, "Not after he last few days."

"Well that plan may very well be thrown out the window now." Natasha said shutting her phone as the texts went through. "If he got a hold of you, knowing everything you know, it could be just as dangerous as handing the Doctor over to him."

"I don't know that much." Sara brushed her comment off.

"Never the less, it's too risky now." She said.

Clint shook his head, "How else are we going to lure him out? He clearly cares about her!"

"How is forcing me to give him a blow job a form of liking someone? Last I heard that was sadistic rape for nothing more than his own twisted pleasure."

Clint nodded in her direction, "Exactly, pleasure. Loki is disgusted by all things on this planet, most of all humans. The fact that he got any pleasure from your mere touch is astounding. Trust me when I say that he feels something for you—it may not be the fluffy kittens and sparkling rainbows kind of feelings, but even sex and lust are a form of feeling."

"Wow, does that not make me feel better." Sara said, feeling her stomach drop. "He just wants to rape me and watch me suffer through it. Sounds like the ideal plan guys, let's go with that one." She said sarcastically.

"No decisions until we're all here." Natasha said, putting her foot down. "We have more information and options than we know what to do with."

Clint relaxed back into his chair, putting his hands behind his head, "You're the boss."

Natasha gave him a half smile. "We'll hear from Stark by the end of the day, he's just finishing up a project with Pepper, installing security at our underground facility beneath Stark Industries. The captain is with Fury, they're still trying to clean up the mess in New York. We're top priority now, so we should all be together by—"

"Excuse me, pardon the interruption." The cool voice of Jarvis interrupted them. "There's someone at the gate, he's tampering with the controls, attempting to gain access to the grounds."

Natasha groaned, "What now?"

"I've run his photo through the police records, and although he has no criminal record he is on file as a consulting detective." Jarvis informed.

"Laurel!" Sara said, jumping up from the table, regretting her action immediately as her head pounded violently. "Let them in Jarvis!"

"Yes, Ms. Wilson."

"The detective is here?" Clint asked. "Why hasn't he gone away yet? This is above his head."

"He knows that, I'm sure." Natasha said. "But he's into Sara's friend, so I'm sure that's why they're here." She guessed.

The large front door opened, Laurel ran in, "You ran away!" She said upon seeing Sara. "I had to use him to find you." She pointed to Sherlock.

Sara narrowed her eyes, "Don't yell! I'm not feeling too hot."

"Sick?" Laurel asked.

Sherlock made a disgusted noise, "Step back from her if she is."

Sara glared at him, "Hung over, you insensitive asshat."

"I'm merely looking out for the wellbeing of your friend." He replied, taking no notice to her insult.

"I am in no mood to be insulted today, so thanks for dropping my friend off but you can go ahead and leave." She said, dismissing him.

Sherlock stepped forward narrowing his gaze, "Do not be so insolent!" He nearly spat at her. "You're nothing but a pathetic simpering woman with the façade of bravery and confidence. Had it not been for me—"

"What?" Sara questioned, stepping even closer to him, "If it wasn't for you I wouldn't be here? Did you save me, Sherlock? Did you find where I was and come and rescue me? Was it you who tricked the guard into getting Loki out of the room? You who got him out in time before he fucking raped me again? That was you?" She was hissing, sarcasm dripping off her every word, "In that case, thank you very much, I do indeed owe you my life, sir." She gave a bow, staring daggers into his eyes every second.

Sherlock hadn't an idea of how to react to this situation; no one had ever spoken to him like that, or revealed such horrid things to him in such a fashion. "I-"

"Have nothing else to say to me." Sara finished for him and spun around heading back upstairs.

Sherlock looked in the dining room, Natasha was obviously furious. His words sounded so close to mewling quim that she heard the distant insult reverberating through her mind over and over, threatening to reopen old wounds.  
The blond man sitting next to her only looked amused, clearly impressed by what the girl had just said and done.  
He glanced at John, who was slowly shaking his head, was he ashamed of him? Finally he risked looking in Laurel's direction, she was definitely angry.

"That is not trying to get along with her." Laurel said. "Sometimes I just don't even understand how someone could be so insensitive."

"To be fair," Sherlock attempted to talk himself out of this mess, "I hadn't a clue she'd been treated like that by her captor. Moriarty would have never—"

"Bloody hell, Sherlock." John snapped, "It's not always about Moriarty and how he acts, this is bigger than either of us, you can't keep assuming you understand everything about it."  
This outburst stunned Sherlock into silence.

"I'm going to check on Sara." Laurel said, needing to get away from the situation. She stormed up the stairs, too angry to look at Sherlock. He couldn't even try to be nice to Sara! He was incapable.

"Well, that hand was sufficiently poorly played." Clint said, horribly entertained, he knew Sara could handle herself, he liked her and loved watching her snap at people who were coming down on her. She was like the little sister he never had. "Toast?" he offered, holding up a plate with a stack of toast. Natasha only grimaced at him.


	12. Chapter 12

As Laurel reached the top of the staircase she turned right and made her way down the hall, pushing the double doors open on the first door to her left. She found Sara on the bed, fiddling around with her IPod, holding a pipe in her other hand. "Getting stoned, are we?" She sat down next to her friend on the bed.

Sara looked up, "Yep, it's the only way I can deal with everything; it may also make this hangover not feel like the worst thing ever." She threw the sock into her purse, for later. "I bought at ounce when I got here."

"Wow, dude, you're stocked." Laurel took the pipe from her, lighting it and taking a hit, while Sara put her IPod away in her purse as well.

"I know I'm a fiend, what can I say?" She shrugged and took a hit herself. "Speaking of fiends, are you actually having sex with that freak downstairs?"

Laurel blushed, "I know, he's incapable of acting like a human being, but I really like him. He's smart, and sweet…in his own way." She admitted. "I can't help it, I really like him."

Sara rolled her eyes and exhaled a large cloud of smoke, "I still think he's a complete ass."

"I'm not arguing with you."

Silence filled the room; the only noise was the muffled voices coming from downstairs. "So…I might be bait for Loki." Sara said.

"What?!" Laurel cried.

"Would you be interested in dating a scientist? I assume Dr. Banner will be flying here soon. Sure he's all hulky but when he hulks out on his own terms he's a big green sweety—or that's what I've read anyway." Sara let out more smoke, "Yeah, you two would be good together. You can both do yoga and get high together."

"They're going to use you as bait?"

"What?" Sara looked at her, clearly having lost her train of thought, "Oh, yeah, maybe, I donno. Who's to say?" She passed the glass pipe over to Laurel. "Times, they are a changing."

Laurel let out a defeated sigh, smoke expelling from her mouth, "True data." Was all she could manage to say. Everything was different, but she hadn't an idea whether it was for the good.

Downstairs, Clint sat back, munching on his third piece of toast with honey and peanut butter, eyeing the two men in the room with him. Natasha had gotten up and stalked off upstairs shortly after Sara's outburst; he knew she could handle herself. It was the two new men in the room he was interested in finding out more about.

"So. You guys from around here?" He took another bite of his toast and slurped loudly at his coffee. Seeing Sherlock grimace, he snorted out a laugh. "I can't believe you stooped to hooking up with Laurel there if you're such a prude about everything. She's no angel, judging by the fact that she's Sara's friend."

"Yes, I am perfectly aware of that, thank you," Sherlock snapped. Looking defeated suddenly, he sat down at the table, reaching for a piece of toast. Slathering it liberally with peanut butter, he proceeded to eat it in roughly three bites, much to the amusement of John and Clint. "yeah, we're from around here," John put in helpfully. "I suppose you could say we run an independent business together. Well, it's more like he solves crime, I keep an eye on him and blog about it. And help pay the rent. We're based in downtown London."

Clint raised an eyebrow. "That's a pretty pricey area to run a small business in."

"Yes, well. The landlady has known Sherlock for sometime now and owes him a favor, and it seems that the clients Sherlock manages to snag are usually independently rich. I knew from the start we only took this case on account of he thought Laurel there had a cute arse, however." Sherlock glared at John from across the table as he made his way through another piece of toast. John merely smiled widely at him. Swallowing, he cleared his throat.

"Do try not to put it so crudely, John. Yes, she happens to be very... physically attractive... yes. She's also quite smart, however. Smarter than I think she realizes. Quick to learn. Nice to meet a woman who's in control of her emotions. Well, usually she is. So far that I've known her. Good lord, I haven't even known her for more than three days..."

Clint took one look at the bewildered look Sherlock was giving his toast and burst out laughing. Sherlock seemed startled. John joined in. "Christ. Dude. Oh man, he has it bad! John, you ever seen him like this before?"

"only the once, and it was much more... subtle. Not quite so physical. This is a new one for him."

"Would you two mind not talking about me like I'm not here?"

"No, I don't mind doing it at all. So. Alright then. I assume he needs help making Laurel not be mad at him?"

"Oh, God yes. Poor man is hopeless when it comes to tact. I promise you I've tried to teach him it before, he seems not to have a filter really."

"The only thing I can see for him to do at this point is apologize and take her out to dinner. Well, Laurel and Sara out to dinner. Then again, maybe he should learn a few things before an excursion out and about with the best friend."

"Would you two kindly _shut up_?"

"Don't worry yourself, I'm done now." Clint leaned back in his chair, grinning like the Cheshire Cat. I like this John guy, he thought. And Sherlock, even if he is sort of a cock.

John looked around the dining room. "Got any more toast? I'm starving."

Meanwhile, Sara and Laurel were well and truly high after a shared four bowls. "Dude. Man. Sara. Wherever you got this stuff... it's actually completely awesome. Ha. Aweeeesommmmmmme."

Sara giggled, tucking away the pipe back into the sock, along with the tin of weed and the lighter. "I know, riiiight? I totally lucked out. The receptionist at work hooked me up, her boyfriend grows the stuff. Nothing better than homegrown."

"ugh." Laurel ran her tongue around her mouth and grimaced. "Gives you crazy cotton mouth though. Um... can we go downstairs in a bit? I need water. Or some breakfast. Oh, I need both. Yes, definitely both."

Sara looked up from her purse, squinting at Laurel through bloodshot eyes. "Promise that boytoy of yours is going to behave this time? Seriously Laurel, can't you find a normal one?"

"I can't make promises, but um. I'll kick him or something if he's mean again. And no, no I cannot. You know my type."

Sara and Laurel spoke simultaneously. "Wierdos!"

They collapsed into a pile on the bed, giggling madly for a few minutes before calming down.

"Ok. Yes, ok, let's go down. I want some breakfast now too. Maybe you can make Sherlock take you out for food?"  
"I'll see what I can do."

Sherlock was sitting sullenly at one end of the table, watching John and Clint chumming it up at the other end, when the girls made their giggly way down the stairs and into the dining room. Sherlock looked up, surprised. "Laurel... you're... wait, you're high?"

"That I am, good sir! And I am also incredibly hungry, you gonna share that toast or what? Oh, peanut butter..."

He stared openmouthed as Laurel sat down beside him and began eating the toast off his plate. "Oh, man, am I ever glad you like peanut butter. Peanut butter is like, an integral part of my life. Did you know peanut butter is an excellent source of protein for vegetarians? … wait, of course you did, you pretty much know everything. You must have worked out already that I'm a veggie."

Sherlock continued to look stunned, but managed to find his voice. "Erm. Yes, well. I had figured you didn't eat meat. I wasn't aware you were such a fan of peanut butter, however." He paused a moment before speaking up again. "I'mverysorryaboutwhathappenedearliercanyouforgiveme?" it seemed to come out all in one rushed breath. He inhaled deeply once he finished, looking at Laurel with a mixture of hope and trepidation. She smiled sweetly at him, managing to swallow a huge mouthful of toast before speaking. "I bet that's the first or second time you've apologized to anybody ever. So yeah, I forgive you, I know that took effort. But really, you need to try and turn it off around Sara at least, ok? Show her your nice side, I know you have it, or else I wouldn't hang around."

Sara snorted from her spot beside Clint, already through her second piece of toast and working on a huge mug of tea. "It would be nice if he tried more often than that, but yeah, I can settle for him being nice to me, at least."

Sherlock looked like he was controlling the urge to burst out into a blistering retort. Taking a deep breath, he looked down the table towards Sara. "I um. I should apologize to you directly, as well. Forgive me. I assume things for a living. Be assured I shall do my best not to assume things about you in future. Well, most of the time." He picked up his remaining piece of toast and began to quietly and savagely demolish it, his eyes on the plate. Laurel watched him, her chin resting on her left hand, a goofy smile on her face. He even looks dreamy when he eats...

Sara looked so surprised that Clint laughed and slapped her on the back. "Aww, Sara, he's trying! Give the poor man a break. Alright, I'm gonna go find Natasha. We need to figure out our next move from here. Looks like you're all involved, whether S.H.I.E.L.D. likes it or not. Enjoy the toast, sorry we don't have eggs or much else. Tony left this place sorely understocked for hangover breakfasts."

Laurel and Sherlock made their way through the still miserable rain, down Baker street and towards the boy's flat. Natasha had come back to the dining room after Laurel and Sara had demolished most of a loaf of bread and an entire small jar of peanut butter to let them know that the guys (aka Tony Stark and Dr. Banner) were on their way in, and they wanted a meeting with Clint, Natasha, and Sara. Laurel and Sherlock were not invited, and Natasha had told Sherlock so with a look on her face that dared him to say anything about it. Looking first to the expression on Laurel's, and then John's face, he had decided against his usual arguments and meekly said that he intended to take Laurel for tea anyways. Before Natasha could recover from the shock, Sherlock had grabbed Laurel by the arm, spinning her about and fairly dragging her towards the front door of the huge house. John had followed, smiling to himself as Laurel and Sara made hasty goodbyes as they were both drawn away to different activities for the day. John himself had managed to get a date for lunch, and had headed off into the rain on his own, hailing a cab as he told Laurel and Sherlock to behave with a wink and a two-finger salute.

Laurel was gripping Sherlock's arm tightly, still slightly tipsy from the pipe she had shared with Sara. "soooo, where are we going for tea?"

"The flat. My flat."

"Thought you were taking me out somewhere nice," Laurel teased, looking up at him from under the hood of her jacket. She tripped with a whoop over a crack in the sidewalk, and Sherlock gracefully grabbed her back up before she could face plant on the pavement. He gave her one of his rare smiles. "Maybe once you've sobered up a bit. For now, I think a nice cup of tea and some telly is all you can handle right now."

"Ohmygod, you say 'Telly', that's so adorable. British men and their accents will be the death of me. Well, you will, anyways." She giggled before seeming to become serious suddenly. She followed Sherlock up the stairs and into the flat, looking at him with concern. He turned around, pulling off his scarf and coat, working the gloves off his fingers one by one. "Something wrong?" he asked lightly. God, please don't be mad again...

"I just... I hope you don't mind that I get high. I also drink a fair bit sometimes. You seem sort of straight edge."

He stood in the middle of the living room, looking at her with a blank face. Slowly he drew in a deep breath, biting his lip, obviously hesitant to say what he had on his mind. "I wasn't always so straight edge."

Laurel looked at him suspiciously. "You aren't just putting on an act for me, are you? Cuz I'll find out eventually. Somehow. I'm smart too, you know."

"I could never put on a disguise in front of you. I'm effectively naked when you're in the room. Um. I suppose that's the easiest way to put it. And believe me, I know you're smart. Not as smart as me, but you're at least clever and that counts for something." He controlled a sudden urge to smile at the surprised look on her face. "I used to do drugs to keep me busy. You know how busy my mind is... it took a lot of drugs to keep me going. Not just one at a time, either. Being a detective may make me insufferable to many, many people, but at least I'm alive. My brother has had to wake me up in a hospital bed I don't remember getting myself into more times than I care to think about right now."

Laurel continued to stare. She slowly walked over to him and surprised him by wrapping her arms around him and shoving her head gently into his chest, burying her face in his shirt. "I'm glad you're still around, then. I can quit if it'll help keep you away from that stuff." Her words were muffled against him, and he could feel her breath on his skin through the thin cotton of the shirt he was wearing. He had a sudden urge to talk about things other than drugs. Funny how she can do that to me, he mused.

"I wouldn't worry too much about it. John has and continues to drink like a fish around me regularly, and I seem to hold up fine. Would you like some tea now? My favourite 'crap telly' shows are on, tea and crap tell go well together."

"Crap telly? What the hell is that?"

"John assures me that my television habits are apalling, but I find it stimulating. Good to keep me occupied for the afternoon, anyways. I can tell you which men are the father of the woman's baby every time, want to see me do it?"

"You're going to try and impress me by picking baby daddies out of hordes of slutty men who are too stupid to wrap it? I am... intrigued."

"I was hoping you would be. I'll show you my room afterwards."

"Oh, that's as subtle as an axe to the face."

"Never said I was any good at subtle. Just at observation."

"Oh, and what do you observe about me right now?"  
"You want me to kiss you."

"I always want you to kiss me, anybody can see that. That was too easy... Where do I want you to kiss me?"

Sherlock smiled. This was going to be an excellent afternoon in.


	13. Chapter 13

Sara had been sulking in her bedroom when it happened. She had been thrilled to finally meet Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, and they had been perfect gentlemen. Tony was just as handsome and boyish and charming as she had expected, but he was surprisingly short. Dr. Banner had insisted that she call him 'Bruce' and smiled warmly, his brown eyes seeming to always be a bit sad, even when he was happy.

And then, Natasha had informed her that they needed to have a closed meeting to discuss strategy without her, before they could bring her in and get her up to speed. She hadn't been exactly surprised, but she had been hoping to be included a little more. Well, I am just the silly sad library tech, she thought moodily. I suppose I should be happy they didn't ship me back to Canada at the first sign of trouble. Only because I know too much! Dammit. She had smiled and said of course, for sure, call me when you need me. That had been three hours and three bowls of prime weed ago. Seems I'm gonna be permafried for my stay here, she thought to herself.

The bolt of light had been huge, screaming through the large west-facing window, breaking it into a thousand shimmering pieces. Crackling with energy and singing like a a chorus of unearthly wine glasses, the light had slowly faded to the point she could peek from the head of her bed and to the floor at the foot.

Loki was crouched there, eyeing her ferally. Smoke seemed to rise and wrap around him from the scorched spot he was in on the floor.

"Hello again, little spy. You'll be coming with me now."

As he came striding up to her, she clung to the headboard, the whites of her eyes seemingly visible all the way around her irises as she stared at him in fear. "How the _FUCK_ did you do that?!" She screamed. He grabbed her by the wrist, making her gasp. He smiled down at her, his eyes burning into hers.

"Seems your intelligence about my "meagre stores" of Tesseract energy were incorrect. Come along now, darling. We've a busy night ahead of us." It was then that she noticed the small cube that looked for all the world like a smaller version of the Tesseract in his other hand. Fuck, fuck fuck fuck! She wracked her hazy brain, trying to remember if there was any way to stop a Tesseract teleport... dammit, she had read every report on the stupid thing!

She wondered no more and instead screamed again at the top of her lungs as they fell together into a million pieces of light. Loki had taken her.

"So what's the plan then?" Tony asked, taking a seat next to Bruce, on the couch in the library. "Use her lure Loki out of whatever military base he's hiding in?" He pocketed his sunglasses and looked intently at Natasha.

She shrugged, "I'm not too sure that that's our best option. Sara knows a lot about the files that Loki wants intel on. It may not be the wisest thing to dangle her in front of him, just in case he manages to procure her." She was sitting across from Tony, a glass of wine in her hands. "That, and also she had a bad experience when he took her last time."

Bruce leaned forward, "How bad is bad? Isn't every experience with Loki a bad one? You and Clint both had to spend time with him and when you came out of it you seemed fine."

Clint cleared his throat, "She's a surprisingly strong girl, more sarcasm and humor then cowardice, for sure—but she went through some really rough stuff. It definitely compares to my experience, but in another respect."

"Well, I gottta know now." Tony said. "You can't offer up that tidbit in front of me and not tell me. What did Tall-Angry-and-Psychotic do to her?"

"We promised we wouldn't tell." Natasha said. "It's on a strictly need to know basis at the moment."

"I still say we use her to get to Loki." Clint opted. "She'd do it, for sure."

Natasha turned her attention to him, "What she says and feels is completely different."

Clint smirked, "Or what she says and feels may be the exact same."

"Ok, I need to know, right now." Tony said. "My basis needs to know."

Bruce looked at Tony, "We should respect her privacy, she clearly isn't ready to talk about it and—" he was cut off by a nearly deafening shattering sound, followed by a shrill scream. The team jumped up from their seats without saying a word and ran upstairs. They all knew who had made the noise and who had screamed. Loki had figured out where they were and he was coming for Sara.  
They ran up the stairs and burst into the room Sara had claimed as her own, finding nothing but small shards of glass littering the floor and the bed. The girl was gone, and so was Loki.

"So, new plan then?" Tony said, trying to make light of the situation.

Natasha spun on her heel to face the three men. "Tony and Clint, go to the lab, I want you to turn Sara's tracer on and monitor her vitals, make sure she's still alive and well. When you locate her I want the two of you to go find her and gauge the situation. Where he's keeping her, how big the facility is and how many men they have at their disposal.

"Uh-Natasha?" Bruce called; he was looking at the scorch marks on the hardwood floor. "I don't mean to sound paranoid or to make hasty assumptions, but this looks like it could be the work of the teseract."

Natasha exhaled, "You're probably right. Ok, you and I are going to go down to Sara's archives. We will acquire all the files on the TARDIS and the teseract." She designated all the jobs, assuming her leading role seeing as the captain wasn't there. "We'll meet back in the lab here. If you make a move, outside of the orders I've given you, let the rest of the team know."

"Alright." Tony nodded, "So just to be sure, before I do anything, am I on a need to know basis now? I mean the Jolly-Green-God did just smash into my London house and took one of my very honored guests."

Natasha glared at him, "Later!" She snapped, "Now go!"

Both tony and Clint began to make their way to the lab, "She's so feisty."

Clint nodded, "Yes she is, and that's how I like them." Both men high fived as they made their way to the basement, which doubled as a warehouse, decked out with computers, laboratories and dozens of cars.

"Jarvis bring up Ms. Wilson's vitals and trace her location." Tony ordered.

"I'm terribly sorry, sir, but I can't seem to locate her whereabouts." The monotone computer voice politely answered.

Clint looked at Tony with an arched eyebrow. "What now?"

"Thank you, Jarvis, for being no help at all." Tony said, ignoring the computers second apology. "This is going to take a little more time then we hoped." Tony turned on his computers and began to type in statistics into one, longitude and latitudes in another, and hacking into the SHIELD employee files on a third screen.

"So I guess I'll just hang out?" Clint asked, clearly not wanting to have anything to do with the computers.

"You can shine my suit?" Tony suggested, but when he saw the unamused look on his coworkers face he quickly said, "Or, you know, you can make a playlist." He said motioning to an IPod, which was painted the same colours as his suit, and that was sitting on top of a very impressive pair of speakers. "We might be here for a while."

Sara gasped for air and fell forward as soon as the light around her dimmed and she felt her feet on solid ground once more. "Worst way to travel." She muttered, slowly picking herself up off the floor, using the large four poster bed for help. Slowly she looked around the room, realizing that she wasn't in the decaying shower prison. Instead she found herself in a luxurious bedroom, swathed in dark tones of red and green. A fire was crackling in a stone fire place, making the room a little too warm. "Where are we?"

"My chambers." He said, a dark smile playing on his face.

"Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!" Sara cried out as she jumped up onto the bed, standing on the mattress and using one of the posters for balance. "You stay away from me!" she said, the smile from his face never fading. She took a deep breath, wishing that she wasn't as stoned as she was. "You do not want me! I am all sorts of fucked up-more so than you!" She challenged. "Plus, I know nothing! I'm actually an idiot, and that's not even a lie! I'm not as smart as you think I am, SHIELD actually hired me because they were looking for fools. Buffoons you might say! Simpletons to file papers for them!" She took a breath, trying to figure out more ways in which she could convince Loki to realize she was useless. "I went to community college, which is for people who don't like university, or can't hack it in my case. That's no good. Also I have slightly unplucked eyebrows, I totally forgot my tweezers in Canada and therefore I've turned into a bushman." She touched her eyebrow with her index finger and shuddered in disgust. "Who would want this?!" She realized she was becoming hysterical, but couldn't seem to stop herself now. "You want this?!" she gestured to her body. "Well, if you do then maybe _you're_ the crazy one! _You're_ the one who needs help, and let me tell you, if you want to get help I can't be the one to help you. Two crazy people do not a sane person make—and don't give me any of that two negatives make a positive thing, I don't want to hear it!" She was nearly yelling. She took a deep calming breath, "Alright, well now that that's been discussed you can take me home now." She requested, finally stopping long enough to look at Loki, who's smile had long since disappeared and was replaced with a look of utter confusion.

"Did they drug you?" he asked.

"Pfft! They don't drug me!" she said cynically, "I can drug myself, thank you very much."

Loki disappeared the tersseract, "So you did this to yourself?"

"Oh, that was spiffy." She said, in awe of the object having been there one moment and gone the next. "And yes, I did this to myself, but it was because of you!"

"Me?"

"After… after you did…and we—whatever! You know what I mean." She whined.

Loki's smile grew again, he began to step towards the bed, amused by how each step he took Sara took one back, until his legs were pressed against the foot of the bed, and she was standing on the pillows, clinging to the headboard.

"That is quite close enough." Sara warned, pointing an accusing finger at him. "Stay back! I would like to maintain what I can of my maidenhood."

"Maidenhood?" he laughed at the word, "This will be more fun than I thought."

"I'm not into one time deals." Sara said, trying to sound brave, but even she could hear the quivering tone in her voice. The hysteria was draining from her, "So, you either propose marriage or we're done here."  
Loki slowly crawled onto the bed, shaking his head at her.  
She went to blabber on about something else, but the words were stuck in her throat. Instead she decided to make a run for it; she turned and tried to jump from the bed, but felt his hand wrap around her ankle pulling her back to him. She struggled to get away but found herself pinned down under his body, his leather and armor digging uncomfortably into her skin. "Do you ever wear normal clothes?" she asked poking at the armor. He grabbed her wrists and held them in a vice like grip above her head. Her mind was racing again, how could she get out of this situation? "You really don't want this." She said, meekly.

"Oh?" He asked, "And why would you say that?"

"I'm a filthy and disgusting human. I'm not very smart—sarcastic, yes, but far from brilliant. I'm lumpy in all the wrong places…except neck and chest, those are some pretty good parts—but that's beside the point! Lumpy…" her voice drifted away, feeling herself being pulled into his eyes. "Is any of this actually working?" She finally asked, giving up.

"Not in the way you want it to." He whispered.

Sara shook her head, causing her blond hair to fly everywhere, "Are you doing this to me?" She asked.

"Doing what?" he asked, enjoying this situation immensely. He was usually the one who did all the talking, but he couldn't help but savour each moment of watching his little spy completely fall apart in front of him.

"You're using your trickster ways to seduce me." She accused, refusing to look him in the eye, believing that to be his source of trickery. She felt him chuckle on top of her, she squirmed, trying to ignore her growing lust. The entire bottom half of her body was tingling, and all she could do is struggle against it.

"All my tricks are done with magic, and my silver tongue." He licked her neck, causing her to shudder slightly, her breath increasing. "Not with my eyes."

"I have split ends." She tried again feebly. "And my actual hair colour is a grey mousy blond…I have the tendency to laugh at inappropriate situations…" She trailed off. It was useless. She was tired of listing her flaws, and the drug in her system wasn't filling her with any form of confidence. She turned her head, staring him in the eyes once again. "You're going to kill me, aren't you?"

"Not at the moment."

She tried a last attempt at escape, struggling beneath him, trying to pull her arms free, but it was futile. "Well then…you're going to break me, leaving me in ruins." The fear in her voice was palpable.

He leaned in even closer to her, "I'll do my best."

She stared into his eyes again, and then smashed her lips against his, finding her attempts to resist how much she wanted him, as useless as her hopes of escape.

AUTHORS NOTE: If you guys are liking the story, please let me know. Send me a message or leave a review. I see that Lust Over Logic is getting a bit of traffic, but I haven't a clue as to if anyone is actually enjoying it. If it's not popular then I will stop editing and posting chapters, but if there are people out there who do like it, then I will continue editing and uploading. Thanks! :)


	14. Chapter 14

Loki was seemed surprised momentarily by the ferocity of the kiss, but began to kiss her back with equal fervor within seconds. His tongue swept through her mouth, boldly exploring, and he let go of her wrists only long enough to adjust so that he was holding her hands with one of his own, the other running down her neck, beginning to explore the curves of her body. He pulled away suddenly, his eyes burning into hers, Sara gasping beneath him.

"What?" she asked breathlessly, chest heaving against his. "What's wrong?"

"What is that... substance you taste of? It seems... oddly green."

"That's the drugs I was telling you about. And they are green. I wish I had more right now." She snapped, losing her patience. What the hell was this? Get on with it! If I'm gonna be all conflicted and turned on, I want to get it over with and get to the good stuff!

"I want some of this drug. You seemed rather relaxed before I took you, and you're... looser now, somehow, than the last time I did this to you. Intoxication is the only thing you Midgardians have gotten right."

"Well," Sara said, beginning to try and wriggle out from under him, "You may not have noticed, but I sure as hell did, that you took me in too much of a hurry for me to do much more than scream. Prick."

"And yet you seem to have a tin in your pocket, along with other things." His free hand held up her pot tin, along with the pipe and lighter she had stashed in her hoodie pocket shortly before Loki had arrived. Oh my God, I am still so high, she thought dazedly... "You seriously want to stop in the middle of what we were doing and smoke that?"

"Yes. I am a God, we will do as I please. And it would please me to be intoxicated... if this drug will even alter my superior senses. I take leave to doubt its powers. I seem to show a better tolerance for alcohol than the rest of you puny creatures."

Well, Sara thought fuzzily, what the hell. May as well put off the rape as long as possible... will it even be rape? Ugh...

In the end, it was obvious that Loki had smoked a pipe of some sort on Asgard before. He watched intently as Sara loaded what was easily a gram into bowl and lit it, thumbing the clutch before inhaling deeply, taking a large hit before handing the pipe to Loki. He smiled at her and repeated the performance, although he seemed surprised upon inhaling. He put the pipe down very carefully and tried to exhale slowly, as Sara had, but began coughing about halfway through, trying futilely to hold the rasping notes back. Sara laughed dementedly, smoke curling from her mouth and nose as she did. "Somebody's a first timer!" She hooted, grabbing the pipe and taking another hit.

Loki glared at her, still coughing spasmodically. "I'm.. I'll be fine. That is... rather harsh. I don't see how that is supposed to be any fun. You're obviously a damaged creature to enjoy such torture of your airways."

Sara laughed and began to tease him, incredibly high at this point due to the top up she was now getting. "Or you're just a wimp. Wimpy Asgardian lungs. Oh, let me guess, you're used to the pure and superior air up on your higher plane of reality? Pffft."

Loki blinked at her, his eyes seeming to come unfocused for a moment. "You're most definitely not inhibited when you take this... weed, you called it? Certainly looks like nothing more than a weed from a ditch... "

He stopped as his speech trailed off, noticing something that seemed to be just beyond and behind Sara's head. Making his way across the bed on all fours and past Sara, he grabbed a handful of the rich red curtain surrounding the sides of the bed, running his hands through it. "These colours, they seem brighter than usual... is it working, do you think?"

Sara giggled again, exhaling clouds of smoke as she did. "Oh, it's working. Pretty quickly, too. I don't think you're immune to this stuff at all. So much for being Mr. High-and-Mighty God of Asgard." She handed the pipe over. "Go on, take another one. I dare you."

He turned to her, glaring, and grabbed the pipe, taking another hit, slower this time, but still large. He managed to exhale without coughing, and seemed entranced by the smoke flowing out of his mouth. "Everything seems to be very vivid. Very... bright."

He turned on her suddenly, throwing the pipe to the foot of the bed, crushing her against the headboard. Sara gasped, deathly scared and yet incredibly excited for what might happen next. Maybe if he's high I can keep him from doing what I think he's going to try and do...

He caressed the side of her face, his hand running down to grip her hip whilst the other gripped her by the shoulder. He smiled, crookedly, so different from the first time she'd seen that grin, cold and maniacal... his lips found hers, and she couldn't help but kiss him back just as passionately as he kissed her.

He let himself slowly collapse on top of her, his weight dragging them down to the bed, into the huge pile of pillows and tangled sheets. He seemed intent on holding her close, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her deeply. She decided in her haze of drugs and arousal to do the same. He groaned into her mouth and she was instantly wet, feeling him grind his erection against her as he began tugging at her shirt, working it up and over her head. She didn't resist, her mouth only leaving his to allow him to rip the shirt off and toss it to the floor. She began to fumble with the clasps and straps of his outfit, trying to figure out how to get all the leather and armor off of him. He stopped kissing her, pulling away for a moment. "I have an easier trick for that."

As he smiled at her, she could see his outfit shimmering and seeming to dissolve into something more... civilian. He was dressed in a black, matte suit of some sort, but it seemed old fashioned, cut strangely, with long coat tails. A green and silver tie, along with a long green silk scarf, completed the look. She noticed that he was now barefoot. "This should be easier for us to handle."

"How did you do that?"

He didn't answer, merely crushing her to him again. She didn't push the subject, and instead began to unbutton his shirt, loosening the tie and tossing the scarf aside. God, she thought, I'm forward when I'm high...

Loki seemed to be getting frantic, helping her to rip open his shirt as she started in on his belt buckle. He stopped her hands, grabbing them and once again throwing them over her head, his hand clamped like a vice around them. She cried out from the pain of it, and he inhaled deeply, shuddering. "I can't wait to hear more out of you like that." His other hand began to undo the zipper of her jeans, working them down as he kissed her neck, biting down when it met her shoulder. "You will keep your hands above your head, do you understand me, Sara?" He bit her slightly harder, making her squeak and then whimper. "I will not hesitate to bind you if you do not behave." She only breathed harder in response. His hand left her wrists, went behind her back to undo and toss aside her bra, continuing down to help with shucking her jeans and underwear in one smooth motion. He removed his shirt and jacket. Sara was drawn to stare at the expanse of his chest, white as the rest of his skin, cut sharply by his collarbones. He was thin, but not skinny, his muscles moving smoothly under his skin as he repositioned himself at her lower half, hands running up her thighs. He glanced up at her, grinning wickedly. Oh god, is he going to... Sara gasped as his mouth closed on the skin of the innermost spot on her leg, so close to where she wanted it to be, yet so far away...

He kissed the sensitive skin gently and then pulled away, his warm breath on her skin tickling and torturing. As he repeated the performance on the other leg, one of his index fingers suddenly pushing into her. She cried out loud this time, gripping the pillows above her head to keep from grabbing at his hair, arching her back, and, to her surprise, pushing against his hand as he started to work in and out of her, slowly and then faster. She yelled out when he just as suddenly had his mouth on her, just as wet as she was, incredibly hot and insistent. He must be warmer than a human, that can't be coincidence... She arched, pleading with him. "Oh god, fuck, Loki, don't stop, fuck, please don't stop..."

He chuckled against her, making her gasp and bite her lip hard, whining. "Aren't we insistent... and filthy. I intend on taking my time. You taste delicious." He continued to pump his finger in and out of her, adding the middle one and watching the reaction on her face delightedly. Sweet Jesus, his fingers are so long, he knows just where to put them, this is too much! Sara found herself moaning his name over and over again as he licked her, softly and then more insistently, pressing his mouth harder against her cunt, moaning himself in pleasure. Sara stole a glance down sideways; his eyes were closed as he worked at her, and he didn't seem to be getting tired or slowing down.

His other hand was gripping her hip hard enough to bruise, but she kept her hands above her head just as he had told her to, fisted in the sheets. She could feel herself tensing up around his fingers, about to come, and she knew it was stronger sensation than anything she had felt before. He opened his eyes and stared up into hers ferociously, smiling against her. "You're going to beg for my cock inside you before this night is through." He resumed his task, and as Sara started to come in a hard, crushing wave, she wondered if she was going to argue the point afterwards. She screamed out as she finished, a raw, ragged sound, and he moaned along, sounding like he was saying her name. Sara wasn't sure.

Authors Note: please comment and rate. I've been forgetting to upload this story because I honestly think no one is really into it, haha! Keep me posted and I'll keep you in posts.


	15. Chapter 15

Moriarty slunk away down the hall, the smoothness of his movements not betraying the anger he felt. He had been listening to the encounter between Sara and his Master since they had first arrived; rage welled up inside him, strong enough to make his hands shake as they clenched into tight fists at his sides. So that snivelling creature was what was keeping him from the TARDIS? Bullshit. He couldn't understand what Loki saw in that... woman. She wasn't any more special than any of the others they had met. And now even Sherlock, normally his favorite nemisis, had that tart keeping him busy... perhaps that was for the best, now there's really nobody in London to stop me.

As he made his way down the crumbling staircase, skirting rotted holes in the floorboards, Moriarty smiled to himself as his mind started turning. He'd find a way to get the TARDIS, even if he had to go behind the Trickster God's back to do it. Not that he pays much attention to what I do these days anyways, he thought. Oh yes, I can find a way to get what I can want. I always get what I want. I'm Moriarty, I'm the Spider. Napoleon of Crime.

Loki opened his eyes, his room came into focus; the brightness of the cloudy day pouring in through the open window. He'd forgotten to draw the curtains—however; there had been reasons for his forgetfulness. He rolled over to his left and saw the smooth pale back of Sara. She was sleeping on her stomach, her head facing away from his. The sheets were wrapped around her waist. He leaned in closer to her, smelling her hair, which was spread across her pillow, she didn't stir. He gently touched her back, tracing his finger along the lines of her large chandelier tattoo. He smiled as the thought of the night they'd shared together. He'd claimed her as his three times over before she'd finally passed out of sheer exhaustion. He was impressed with her stamina, her reaction of complete unraveling to his mere touch, and her want to please him. Never had he encountered someone who intrigued him so.

Sara took in a deep breath before bringing her hand up to rub her eyes. She was tired as all sin. She yawned and opened her eyes, wondering why her room was so bright. She suddenly realized she wasn't in her room...or the guest room at Tony's house. Suddenly the memories of all that had happened last night came flooding back to her—Loki. She tried to calm her heart which had begun to race. She felt someone touching her back, tracing her permanent image; she resisted the urge to love every touch, not allowing it to excite her.  
She summoned her courage and turned around to face Loki, he was closer then she was expecting him to be. She stared into his eyes, her thoughts of panic and horror disappearing. "What now?" was what she did end up asking, her voice nearly a whisper, the tiredness form sleep still lingering.

He shifted his head on his pillow, "What do you mean?"

"You've gotten what you wanted." She stated, refusing to look away from him and show how vulnerable she was. "Are you going to kill me now? Torture me for information? Chain me up?"

His mouth quirked into a smile, "I'm far from finished with you, I can't foresee myself killing a creature such as yourself. You give off waves of heat, passion and fire to all you meet, but never let anyone know that underneath it all you are nothing but a small spark." He traced his index finger along her cheekbone, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear as he did so. "The only torture I'd ever let become of you consists only of things that you'd, I think, very much enjoy. They could involve chains if you'd like, but it would always end the same, with you pleading for me."

She closed her eyes trying to suppress her hunger for him. "So what now?" she asked again. "The Avengers are no doubt looking for me."

"They won't find you." He said absently as he ran his hand down her body, tracing her curves. "Any trace they had on you will have been deactivated the moment the tesseract was used to transport you here." He explained. "You could tell me about the TARDIS...it would be helpful, and regardless of whether or not you want to, your feelings for me are far too deep to not eventually tell me anything I want to know." He placed his hand above her breast, against where her heart lay.

Sara looked shocked, "You think I'll just tell you everything."

Loki looked form his hand to her eyes, "Oh yes."

Sara glared at him and slowly moved even closer to him, any space between their bodies closing. She pressed herself against him, placing her hands against both sides of his neck, her lips hovering just above his "And what about me? Would you tell me anything? Do you have such strong feelings for me that you will disclose any precious information?" her hand slid to where his heart was on his bare chest.

Loki stared at her, eyes wide, breath staggering. "Unfortunately." He started, "The case may be both ways." He admitted.

"Good." Sara smiled, feeling more confident about where her life stood in the mix off all of this. She may get out alive, and in the process her heart may be broken into billions of pieces, which could never be put back together, but either way, this was a position in which she didn't mind being in. "In that case..." she kissed his lips and then quickly sat up, pulling the sheet over her chest, looking back at him behind her shoulder, "You're never going to get the TARDIS. Not only because the Doctor isn't here, but because you could never fly it on your own. Even if you figure out how to operate it alone, it's linked to the Doctor symbiotically; he's imprinted himself on its briode nebuliser. It would never fly for you."

Loki was shocked, she knew so much more then he'd ever thought possible. "I plan on putting my own imprint in it."

"Oh?" Sara arched an eyebrow, "And how do you plan on doing that?"

"Using the fragment of tesseract I have." He said.

Sara looked away from him, thinking to herself for a moment. "Oh my god." She turned to him, "That could actually work. However, do you know how you're going to place the tesseract inside of the TARDIS?"

He looked dumbstruck, not realizing that she was going to ask him questions to which he hadn't the faintest idea of how to answer. "I'll figure it out." Was all he said.

Sara laughed, "You have no idea where the heart of the TARDIS is, and that's the only access point into which you could possibly hope of putting the tesseract—and even if you do find it you have no idea how dangerous it is, even to just open the heart of the TARDIS. So very dangerous if you don't know what you're doing."

Loki grabbed her by the waist and threw her down against the pillows, straddling her from above. "You know more about this then I ever thought possible."

She shrugged, "You captured the right library tech. Sad enough to not be missed but smart enough to know more then you even do."

He leaned in closer to her face, "You'd be missed. Clearly I chose the wrong partner for this plan." He hungrily kissed her lips.

She pulled away, "Have I convinced you to not do this yet? To leave the space and time travel to the Doctor?"

Loki smiled an evil grin, "The only thing you've convinced me of is to bring you with me. I don't quite know how I'd feel if you weren't\t with me every second of ever minute." He said, making the decision to claim her, keep her and have her with him for as long as he possibly could.

Sara had never had anyone speak to her the way he did. No one had every expressed such feelings of devotion for her, of possession, and she couldn't help but love it. Her hands combed through his black hair, grabbing onto it roughly and pulling him forcefully down towards her mouth again. She was no longer in control anymore, her heart was his to cherish or crush, however he saw fit. She accepted her fate.

Laurel was looking through the kitchen for some sort of food to make breakfast with. All she could find was jars of human parts, oddly smelling chemicals and a cupboard full of tea...clearly bachelors lived here. Sherlock was still in bed and she was hell bent on making a damn good breakfast for the both of them, if this was going to happen she had to go shopping.  
She wrote a quick note, leaving it underneath the skull on the mantel, saying as much, and then quietly left the apartment heading for the shop just down the street.

As she made her way down the street, thanking the Gods that it wasn't raining again today, she thought of Sherlock. He was unlike anyone she'd ever met. Oddly reclusive, horribly awkward, unable to speak to anyone without sounding rude or outwardly telling them they were boring because he was so much more superior then them—except for her. She felt like she was an exception to every rule. He seemed to care for her a great deal, so much so that he even attempted an apology towards her best friend. For the first time in a long time she actually felt safe in a relationship.

She let out a happy sigh and reached into her purse for her phone, maybe Sara had left a text message. Just as she was scrolling through her messages a black bag was thrown over her head. She tried to scream but there were suddenly hands everywhere. Grabbing at her arms so she couldn't move, over her mouth so she couldn't scram and holding her legs together so she couldn't run. She struggled to get away but whoever had a hold of her was much stronger then she could ever hope to be. She was being carried somewhere, and quickly thrown into a vehicle, she could smell the gas from the exhaust.

"So glad you could join us." A gleeful voice said, once the vehicle had been secured and started to move. Laurel tried to say something, anything, but there was still a hand over her mouth. "I'm sure this will get Sherlock's attention, and as the dominos fall the Doctors' as well." The voice continued.

When she heard Sherlock's name she struggled even harder, hoping that adrenalin would kick in allowing her to escape and run for her life and for his.

"No escaping for you." The voice continued. "Who else should we invite to this party?" No one answered so the voice continued, "A failed business transaction, I should like to ruin whatever that so called 'God' has...and what he has is a slutty key to figuring out the machine I want-oh and we can have fun friendship reunion!" he giggled, "It's not all bad for you! I'm bringing over your best friend, live together die together, that is how friendship works, isn't it?"

Laurel felt a hand against her head, attempting to ruffle the hair that was hidden under the bag. Was he talking about Sara? She recognized the voice; it was Moriarty, who else could manage to grab her off the street at eight in the morning without anyone noticing? He wasn't in league with Loki anymore? Why did he mention Sara, and call her a slut? Was she with Loki? She had been with the Avengers yesterday—what the hell was going on?!

Authors Note: Are you liking the story? Too much going on? Not enough?-I'd like to hear from you!


	16. Chapter 16

Sara had been fixing her hair when the curt, insistent knocks at the door came. Loki looked up sharply from the chair he was sitting in, straightening his tie as he got up to walk towards the door. "I left instructions for us to be left alone barring total disaster, what is this?"

Sara finished putting up her ponytail, smoothing her bangs as she turned to him. "Maybe disaster has struck. The Avengers could have found me."

"You are intriguing, and yet so ridiculous. I have you now, they can search all they want and never find you."

They both jumped as the door crashed open. A tall, thin blond man with piercing eyes was holding a machine gun, pacing into the room with a squad of armored soldiers that Loki had originally allowed Moriarty to hire. The thin man smiled nastily. "On your knees, you poncy git. You aren't in charge here anymore." he pointed the gun at Sara, not bothering to break eye contact with Loki. "Do it or I'll fill her full of lead."

"You think you can order me about? A God?" Loki was still completely relaxed, every bit the arrogant Asgardian Prince. What could this fool do to him?

"Oh, I know I can. You should have paid closer attention to your associates, trickster." The man produced the Tessaract from a large pocket of the black trenchcoat he was wearing. He grinned even wider, clearly enjoying the surprised look on the faces before him. "Move it, you shit. On the floor."

"... As you wish."

Sara stood stock still, feeling like she was trapped in a bad dream. The man placed the tesseract back in his pocket, the machine gun still trained on her. He seemed almost as inhumanly stylish and dangerous as Moriarty... wait, where had she seen him before?

Loki began to crouch down on the floor, dropping his head as he did so. The blond man laughed, an ugly sound, showing all his teeth as he did so. "Never thought I'd see you bowing to somebody. Since you seem so high and mighty."

"Cherish the picture in your mind. It won't last long."

With those words, Loki rolled forward incredibly fast, swiping the man down at the legs and jumping on top of him. He had the gun away from him in an instant, and with a sickening hollow melon sound, he cracked it into the side of the man's head. He went instantly limp, blood leaking slow and steady from his temple. Loki was up in a flash, holding the gun as casually as if he had grown up with one in his hands. He turned to the men crowded at the front of the room, who were now seeming confused as to their next move. The hand not holding the gun was casually rolling the tesseract shard back into his own pocket.

"Whatever Moriarty and this clown paid you, I can assure you'll be paid better for your cooperation from this point on. If you'd like to continue on with this pointless exercise, I'll have no issue with killing every last one of you pathetic creatures who dares try come near me." He hefted the gun onto his shoulder, and looking at Sara, smiled wickedly. "I do so love showing off." The men started to back away slowly, leaving the room. Loki began to bark orders at them as they did, setting up security along the perimeter of the asylum and setting up a watch for Moriarty's jet at the abandoned airstrip an hour away. Sara stood watching, fiddling with a loose thread in her jeans as she watched him. God, he's hot when he's in charge... She blushed and looked down, smiling to herself as she thought about how he'd been in charge only a half hour earlier.

Once the men had left, dragging the blond man out, the last one meekly closing the door behind himself, Loki dismantled the gun with brutal efficiency. With a snort of disdain, he threw it into the corner in pieces. He strode over to Sara, pushing her against the nearest wall, making her squeak in surprise. He smiled at the sound, inhaling deeply. "You're going to come to expect me to do this after any excitement is over." He hungrily pressed his lips against hers, crushing her into the wall as she wrapped her arms around him. She broke away for a moment, gasping. "You know, I only just did my hair. You're going to mess it all up just for a quick screw against the wall?"

"I never said I would be quick with you, little spy. Not right now." he slid one hand under the hem of her shirt, the other finding the zipper on her jeans. She moaned into his mouth as he slid his fingers through the wet heat between her legs. "Shouldn't we be planning what to do next? How do we know Moriarty is coming back?"

"He's predictable. And I already have plans for him. Now, Sara, I want you to be quiet. ….Well, that's a lie, don't talk, but do feel free to cry out. I do so love making you scream."

Sara found herself perfectly willing to do as he said. It was only after, with Loki falling asleep with his head pillowed on her chest, that she realized there was still blood on the floor from where Moriarty's man had been bleeding out. She was only a little surprised to find she didn't care. Maybe I'm getting used to this... lifestyle?

Sherlock came awake slowly, rolling over and immediately pulling a pillow over his head to shield his eyes from the sun pouring in the window. Well, that's a welcome change, he thought. This rain was getting out of hand. He liked having a reason to wear his coat, but the rain hadn't stopped for near on a week. He suddenly realized he was alone in bed and sat up, rubbing his eyes with one hand, the other stretched out over his head as he yawned enormously. Where had Laurel gotten to?

Wrapping himself in a tangled sheet, Sherlock picked his way through the clothes on his bedroom floor, smiling as he did so. Her clothes weren't amongst the mess; she must have gotten up to go and get food. Wandering slowly to the living room, Sherlock found the note he was expecting prominently pinned under the skull. Interesting, she must have known it was real when she went to pick it up; so she wasn't afraid of certain things, dis-articulated body parts included. He wondered just how many weird specimens she saw in a day at her job.

It appeared that John hadn't made it home last night; his date had gone better than he had expected, then. Well, I could have told him she'd put out, Sherlock thought airily, it was obvious from her wrists... He suddenly stopped dead as he walked in front of the window.

Laurel's phone was on the ground at the corner of the street visible from the flat's large windows. Sherlock knew it wasn't a mistake; he knew that electric blue case. It flashed like beacon in the sun, setting off something in the back of Sherlock's head that he hadn't know was there. Before he knew what was happening, he found himself running to his room, throwing on clothes in a haphazard manner as he tried to phone John at the same time. He fell onto his bed as he was pulling on his trousers, the phone wedged between his ear and his shoulder.

"Sherlock? Look, you must know where I am. Bet you're itching to say I told you so, but could it wait? She only just got into the shower, i'm supposed to join her." Sherlock could practically hear John grinning at the other end of the phone.

"John. You need to come now."

John's voice changed instantly, the hint of laughter disappearing. "What's happened?"

"Moriarty has her."

"Who?"

"Laurel."

Laurel had lost all sense of time and direction as the van made its way to... well, whatever destination Moriarty had in mind. She could hear him on his cell phone once in awhile, and she strained to listen over the rumbling of the beat up engine and obviously elderly muffler, but she only caught one word in three. It seemed he was giving orders to somebody named Seb... or Sebby. God, this guy was such a fucking queen. I'm going to bitch slap him so damn hard if I ever get the chance, Laurel thought darkly.

The van came to a jolting stop, causing Laurel to roll and bang against the interior of the vehicle. She swore loudly and was cuffed in the head for it. "now, now, darling, proper young ladies don't talk like that. Get her up, we need to hurry." Laurel felt a pair of arm haul her roughly to the doors and toss her onto the pavement, making her cry out. Moriarty laughed and picked her up himself by one arm. He's strong for his size, Laurel thought dazedly, blinking back tears. She could feel blood soaking through the right knee of her jeans.

Moriarty began to hustle her along, pulling at her arm, twisting at it and laughing if she made a noise. She could hear... airplanes? Her feet were dragging over smooth pavement that could easily have been tarmac. Oh god, where were they taking her? How would Sherlock ever find her once she was on a plane to god knows where? She could feel herself starting to panic, and tried to take a few deep breaths. She was crying, but she managed not to faint like she had the last time things had become out-of-hand. Sherlock will find me, she thought fiercely. He will. I know I dropped my phone, he'll find it and know I've been taken.

She was shoved unceremoniously up a narrow set up steps as the sound of a plane became stronger, surrounding her. The plane seemed to take off mere minutes after she had been brought on board, much faster than any commercial flight she had ever been on; obviously Moriarty could afford a private jet, the jerk. The hood was finally removed from her head once they had taken off. Moriarty was sitting across from her in a posh leather chair, a small white table between them. She was seated in a similar chair, her hands and feet bound, staring defiantly at him. He smiled at her, quirking one brow as her took in her messy hair and tear-stained cheeks.

"Want a drink, love? Might help calm you down some."

"Eat shit and die in a fire, you pretentious douchebag."

"Now, now, what did I say earlier about ladies?"

"In case you haven't noticed, I'm not a 'lady', I'm a woman, and I'm angry as hell. I can't wait for Sherlock to come get me out of this so I can kick your ass myself."

"You're awfully confident for somebody who's tied up and headed out of the country into international territories unknown."

"I always did want to travel. Besides, I know Sherlock will find me. He can find anybody. He's beaten you before, he'll do it again until you two either kill each other or he kills you. I can tell. You're both too smart for your own good."

"so much faith in your brave lover. Oh, this should be good, I can't wait. We're going to have so much fun, all of us."

Laurel could only stare, her eyes narrowing. "All of us? Having a fucked up little party, are you?"

"You are far too vulgar for somebody so lovely. I can see why Sherlock took a shine to you... not that it'll do you any good."

"This is so fucked. May I sleep now? Or have something to read? If I'm being kidnapped by an insane criminal mastermind, I'd like to either get some rest or try to forget where I am for awhile."

"I anticipated that. I have a few books you might like... hell, I know you're already reading one of them. Seb did such a good job in the little time he had to figure you out. So predictable, really, of course you love mysteries."

"I also love watching little shitheads in nice suits get the crap beat out of them, can we arrange that for later?"

The smile vanished from Moriarty's face. "So sorry darling, but you'll have to act nicer if you want me to be nice to you. Otherwise..."

Moriarty suddenly jumped up and strode around the table, leaning in close to her. "Watch your tongue, dear. Or I'll smack it right out of that pretty little head." He slapped her, hard, breaking open her lip and making her whine as she tried to hold back from crying out.

Moriarty giggled as he walked away, headed towards the cockpit. "I'll give you time to think it over, love."

Authors Note: Like what you're reading? Be the first to let me know!


	17. Chapter 17

Sara looked next to her, finding the bed empty. She stretched and pulled the sheets up around her. A wave of fatigue swept over her and she closed her eyes. As she lay on her back she felt someone crawl onto the bed towards her. She smiled, knowing Loki was back from wherever he'd disappeared to. She kept her eyes shut as she felt him climb onto her, straddling her. As excitement filled her, she opened her eyes and saw Sebastian Moran glaring at her from above. She tried to struggle to get away from him, but he was too heavy, she was trapped beneath him. She went to scream but the moment the slightest squeak was uttered from her lips, with a flash, he had a knife to her throat. "Not even your god can save you now." He muttered darkly as he pressed the knife down, blood trickling down her skin, staining the sheets.

"Sara"

Sara opened her eyes, gasping for air and clutching her neck. She looked up to see Loki looming over her, a slightly worried look on his face. She pushed herself up, letting the sheets fall to her waist. "The blood over there," She said looking at the still wet stain on the floor, "And the man who came in here with the gun, he's Sebastian Moran."

"So?" Loki asked dismissively, not taking his eyes off her breasts.

"He's very dangerous." Sara pulled the sheets up to cover her torso.

"So am I." Loki said darkly. "I'm a god, I don't fear any pathetic—"

"Moriarty knows who you are and what you're capable of, he has his BFF assassin after you."

"After me?" he arched and eyebrow in her direction. "They're simply after the tesseract."

"Why are they after the tesseract?"

"I don't know." He shrugged, "Why would it matter, it isn't as though either of those peons will ever attain it."

Sara fell back down against the pillows. "Whatever, I give up."

"Do you fear these men?" Loki asked. "As long as you're with me you have nothing to fear."

"He came in here and aimed a gun at my head. What if he didn't bother making threats and just started shooting?"

"I wouldn't let that happen."

"And what if you couldn't' stop him?"

He let out a defeated sigh, clearly he couldn't talk his way out of this, Sara was far too capable of throwing paranoia laced questions back at him. "What do you suggest?"

"We go somewhere else." She said. "Moriarty probably already knows you have security all over this place; therefore he will assume you're here, when we can be...elsewhere."

"Sounds like a plan that would work on Thor." Loki muttered to himself

"So?" Sara asked, hoping he'd take her advice.

"Fine." He said, "But wherever we go we're using the tesseract to get there. I don't want to risk the Avengers finding you."

"Alright." Sara nodded, she'd put up with the dizziness of travel by tesseract, at least this way they'd both be safer. She'd read SHIELD files about Sebastian and Moriarty. As far as regular mortals go, the two of them were dangerous as all hell, especially if they had a common goal in mind. There'd be no stopping them. Loki may be a god, but he was proud and underestimating his opponents—she was sure Moriarty wouldn't be making that same mistake.  
She got out of bed, sliding into her jeans and zipping up her hoodie, not bothering with her bra or t-shirt.

"You want to leave now?" Loki asked.

"Yes, now." She took his hand and feebly pulled, in attempts to get him out of bed.

He smiled at her weakness, he was surprised by how much he loved how vulnerable she was, something precious that he had a to protect...however, that meant her life could potentially be that much more fleeting. This plan she proposed was a good one.  
He threw back the covers and stood, smiling as he watched Sara's head cock to the side, clearly fascinated by his body.  
"Changing your mind? Maybe we should stay in bed awhile longer?"

Sara pulled her eyes away from him and shook her head, "No, we should go—and our first stop is my place."

Loki stopped putting his pants on and looked up at her, "No."

"Please! I need clothes and a shower."

"No." He said again, pulling his pants up. "You can shower elsewhere, and as for clothes you haven't need for them." He gave her a wicked grin.

Sara refused to take no for an answer. She wanted to have a shower with her body lotion, her razor, her shampoo-she was also low on drugs. An idea came to her. She walked up to Loki as he was buttoning up his shirt. She knelt before him, eyes on the floor, "Please?" She asked. She was clearly infatuated with him, he knew this, but what he didn't know is that she'd been obsessed with him months prior to their meeting. She was exceedingly knowledgeable regarding all aspects of him. She knew the one thing that he loved more than anything was the prospect of people accepting him as their leader, forgoing their independence and reducing themselves to be his submissive.  
She peeked up at him, hoping her plan would work.

He was looking down at her, shocked. His eyes slowly closed to slits, glaring daggers at her. He grabbed her arms and pulled her up. "Don't do that—especially if we have places to be."

"I thought you'd like it."

"You have no idea how much I'd like to play this game with you right now, little spy, but we must be off." He closed his eyes and let out a breath of calming air. She had more power over him then she knew.

Sara wrapped her arms around him as he twisted his hand around in a tight circle, the tesseract appearing in his palm. His other hand was pressed against the small of her back, pulling her even closer against him. She felt his erection and couldn't help but smile. Oh, her plan had worked better then she thought.  
Tangible blue tentacles of energy began to emit from the tesseract. A bright light began to grow, and grow until Sara had to close her eyes tight to avoid potential blindness, wind swept around her hair and she felt weightless—suddenly, very abruptly everything stopped. She opened her eyes to see her living room spinning all around her. She shook her head and took a step forward, only to fall, crumpling to the floor, her face very nearly smashing against the hardwood floors.  
Loki was at her side in a second, helping her up, and steadying her. "I hate tesseract travel." She said with gritted teeth as she pushed away from him and headed towards the bathroom, using the wall as support.

Sherlock ran down the street, pushing past the people exiting a cafe. He bent down and grabbed Laurel's discarded phone. He turned it on, hoping for some sort of clue. She was last browsing her messages, probably seeing if Sara had texted her. There were no recent calls. The phone appeared to be undamaged, which meant that it hadn't been thrown, most likely dropped due to a surprise. She was jumped from the alley to his right.  
He turned and ran down the damp alley way, looking at the ground and walls as he did so. There were no visible signs of a struggle, although you could see by the puddles' slight splash marks and the dirty dragging traces of the garbage smeared cement, that there had been several people, she'd been outnumbered by at least two. There were some shoe imprints in the mud that appeared deeper than others, they had carried her away. He raced to the end of the lane and found curt tire marks that were dug into the sand at the curb of the road; a vehicle had taken off quickly enough to probably make a screeching noise, perhaps some of the residents who lived on this street would know where— his thoughts were suddenly veered off course when he heard his phone ring. It was John.

"Yes?"

"Sherlock, I've just gotten home and—"

"I'm just down the road, in a back lane, come meet me here." He was about to hang up and retreat back to the recesses of his mind when he heard John's voice calling his name through the speaker still. "What?" He snapped.

"Sherlock, did you look at the door when you left?"

"What does that mean? I'm not in the mood for playing games." Sherlock was beginning to get frustrated. He was desperate to find Laurel before Moriarty could do anything to her- all of these petty details were weighing him down. He didn't have time for any of this.

"The front door, you have to see this. It's a message from him." John said quickly, and then hung up.

Sherlock took off before he even heard the last few words from John. Of course the closest clue would be at his home. Moriarty was always a fan of leaving a bold trail behind so he could keep him at an arms length, always testing to see if one day he could ever beat him.  
He saw John down the street, waiting for him.

John waved, cell phone still in hand, "What do you think it means?" he asked Sherlock as the detective finally ran up to him. He closed the front door, so they could get a better lock.

Sherlock squinted, and then took a step back. His entire front door had been sloppily painted a bright royal blue color. "That's the color of..."

"The TARDIS?" John questioned.

AUTHORS NOTE: You got the hots for Hiddleston? Check out my other story. I brought by Sara, only this time she works for an independent film company. A new movie is being cast, and who do you think will be best for the leading role? Allison thinks Tom Hiddleston is ideal, but Sara has her doubts. One Chapter only, there's a start, middle and end. Read it and let me know what you think!


	18. Chapter 18

Sara walked into her room, steam still rolling off her shoulders. That had quite possibly been the best shower she'd ever taken. She smelled like olives and spiced ginger. She'd dried her hair, styled it and put on some minimal makeup. Finally she was starting to feel more like herself. The last days had been hectic and she felt as though she'd been portraying someone she wasn't, someone who was more dull and lifeless, scared and grey. Just being around her personal things put her in a better mood. She shut her bedroom door and opened her closet, when she did so her large cat jumped out at her. "Pippin!" Sara cried picking up the large tabby. "You're alive!" She buried her face in the cats large orange and white gut, causing the cat to let out an annoyed 'murr'. "How did you survive on your own for so long?" Sara asked, putting the cat back on the ground. Pippin, almost as though she could understand what her blond mistress was saying, walked over to Sara's window, jumped on the ledge and pushed her head and big belly out a small hole in the corner of the screen. Sara looked out the window. Pippin gracefully made her way across the eavestroughs of the building, finally landing on another balcony, and meowing loudly. Sara watched as the perky older lady who lived next door, opened her door and cried out, "Hello, lovely! Hungry? I'll get you some fish and milk."  
"My cat is cheating on me." Sara muttered as she squinted and looked at the names on the mailbox, "Pippins new family consists of Jackie and Rose Tyler." Sara thought for a second, that second name sounded familiar...but she hadn't gotten around to meeting her new neighbors yet, so maybe she'd just seen the mailbox before? Who's to say? Well at least her kitty was alive and well.  
She spun back around to the closet grabbing a black and white striped dress, throwing a pair of tights on underneath. Sexy and comfortable, God she loved being home. She grabbed her red leather overnight bag and walked out of her room, down the hall and into the living room where Loki was impatiently waiting, looking through laurel's old text books.

"Where to now?" she asked his attention drifting from the books back to her.

He looked up and saw Sara standing before him with a small overnight bag, completely impressed by how she looked. "I...I don't know yet. You made us leave so quickly..." he muttered, still looking at her.

"Well think fast, I did want to come here, but it's probably not the best place to be if the Avengers are looking for us. You think they'd keep tabs on my place."

"Right." He agreed. "Holding his arms out to her, beckoning her forward to move on to the next place.

Sara glared at him, "When we disapparated here," Sara quoted Harry Potter, not really know what to call transportation via tesseract. "I fell onto my face because I was so dizzy and lightheaded from your blue orb of death. If that happens again, I'm going to be pissed and I will devote all my time to sexually frustrating you."

Loki rolled his eyes, not believing that she could actually accomplish that, however he did agree that he probably shouldn't let her fall again. "Come here." He said, not bothering to answer her question.

She suspiciously stepped forward into his arms and closed her eyes.

"So, what did you find out, Darling?"

Laurel shook her head from the chair she was chained to. One of Moriarty's goons had chained her ankle to the chair, allowing her hands to be free and read some of the very random books that were located on the plane. She pretended to be very much into a copy of East of Eden, when Moriarty had gotten a call.

"But you're fine?" Moriarty was walking up and down the plane, not nervous; every step was a confident walk. "Did you get her?...No? But this is all part of your plan...Right, so it worked...And you know he has both of them?" a large sly smile spread across his face. "Birds of a feather, Sab." He said gleefully.

Laurel felt her stomach drop. Whatever was happening was bad. Something was going according to plan. She turned the page without having read a single word.

"Do what you do best, and keep in touch, I'll see you tonight." And with that he hung up the phone, letting out a little yip of glee and jumped into the chair across from Laurel. "It's a good day today."

"To each their own." She muttered, refusing to look up from the pages, skimming every second word. "You and your lover just make up?"

"Another colleague of mine." Moriarty smiled, leaning closer to her, his dark brown eyes staring daggers into hers. "I have to keep my investments safe." He winked at her. She only glared back. He made a mock frown face, "Tut tut, darling, your friend will be here soon enough. Apparently she's quite smart, or rather, knowledgeable about something I want...I would never have thought she'd be the brainy type after spending as much time with her as I did." He touched his foot, remembering her stomping on it. "You're both quite...brash."

Laurel let out a laugh, enjoying the memory of Sara trying to get the upper hand on him. "Girls kick ass, it says so on a t-shirt."

Moriarty grimaced, "We'll see about that."

Laurel felt a slight shudder travel through the plane. Perhaps they were hitting some turbulence? I bet we're making our descent, she thought darkly. God, I bet we're in some shitty eastern european country that time and capitalism forgot. All sheep on the roads and shoddy buildings with questionable running water and no screens on windows. Ugh.

The turbulence seemed to be picking up; Laurel got out of her chair and went to the only window her ankle chain allowed her to reach. It did seem rather cloudy, but there was something else in the air, something... glowing? What the hell, lightning isn't blue... and it doesn't flare up brighter like this either...

A deafening screaming noise suddenly went through the plane. Laurel thought it sounded like singing wine glasses being smashed as she was thrown to the floor by some sort of shock wave radiating out from the other end of the compartment she was in. Her guards had pulled out some rather heavy looking sidearms, pointing them at the ball of blue light that seemed to be subsiding and melting away, revealing two human forms crouched side by side. Laurel blinked, shielding her eyes with a hand as she tried to focus on the figures. Was that tesseract energy? Sara had said something about it being blue at Tony's estate. The light dissipated completely, leaving some sort of steam coming off the two people on the floor. Laurel could see that it was a man and a woman. She let out a gasp when she suddenly realized who it was.

Loki stood up quickly, boldly striding towards the guards as they raised their guns. The tesseract seemed to appear in his hands from out of nowhere; two bolts of energy shot out of it and at the heads of the guards, knocking them senseless to the ground. Laurel wondered if they were dead. Sara was slower to stand up, and she seemed very wobbly when she finally did. Laurel tried to run to her, but her ankle chain caught her up, knocking her down and dragging the huge chair a bare inch as she fell.

"Sara!... Oooof. Ow. FUCK ow. What the hell?! Why are you here with HIM?"

"How do you even know who he is? Do you know who he is? Oh my god, are you ok?"

"I know because you are SO BAD at closing your computer when you leave the house, and you always give me your password anyways. Quit bringing home work files with you. I'm... I'm ok. Do you even know where you are?"

Loki had detached the chain from the chair and stalked over to the two girls. "Moriarty's plane. You two find somewhere... well, safe-ish. If I'm to do what I intend to do..."

"And what, your eminence, is it that you plan to do, exactly?" Laurel demanded.

Moriarty strode into the compartment, stooping smoothly to pick up a gun from one of his now-prone guards. He smiled wickedly at Loki, who matched him with a savage smile of his own. Loki seemed to be toying with the Tesseract, letting it tumble in the air in front of his outstretched hand. "Now then, Moriarty, remember who you work for. You're quickly wearing out your usefulness to me. I'd put down that silly weapon if I were you."

"Oh, I don't think you're in any place to be making demands of me, Loki. No place at all." Moriarty reached into his pocket... and pulled out what appeared to be another shard of the tesseract.

Loki stopped walking forward, and frowned. "What is this trickery?"

"Oh, I like that, the trickster God wants to know the secrets of my tricks, very funny that is."

"Tell me now, you mewling mortal scum, before I kill you here and now."

A bolt of energy suddenly shot out from the Tesseract in Moriarty's hand, hitting Loki squarely in the chest. It knocked him to the ground, making him gasp with the impact as the wind was knocked out of him. Sara screamed, startling Laurel, who grabbed her before she could run to his side. "Loki!"

"Dammit Sara, I don't think now is the time to get involved..."

Moriarty let out a high pitched giggle. "Oh, you thought you were the only one with one of these? I may not have the Doctor yet, but I have access to some of his... well, friends is the wrong word, shall we say former associates?... they have provided me with all kinds of goodies. I got this just after you took off last, do you like it? The Russians have been hiding this for an awfully long time. Not even you knew about it."

Loki sat up, breathing raggedly as he regained his wind. "It isn't a true tesseract. That's shoddy engineering around a core of stored energy... your battery is going to run out, if you keep it up."

"I've got enough energy stored up to make my point. My point, which is that you aren't in charge here anymore. You may have set this into motion, but I have the resources, Asgardian. Resources on this planet that you can't even dream of. Tell me, was that piece of ass worth it?"

Loki stood up, side-eying Moriarty as rearranged his armor. "It seems I underestimated you, mortal. One thing you've forgotten, though."

"And that is?"

"I'm faster than you."

At 'you', Loki moved blindingly fast, whipping a throwing knife from out of nowhere and directly at Moriarty's head. He barely managed to duck, grunting as it grazed his scalp. He tucked and rolled, launching towards the door and firing off shots of tesseract energy as Loki dodged and continued barraging Moriarty with the small but wickedly sharp knives. The door hissed shut behind him just before Loki reached it; it appeared to be reinforced, and Loki slammed his fist futilely against it in anger. "Damn him! Sara, come to me, we're leaving. The plan has changed."

"I had no idea the plan was to try and _take Moriarty out on a plane._ Are you actually insane, or just that confident?"

"Both, perhaps. Come now."

"I am NOT leaving without Laurel."

"My, but you are insistent when it comes to that creature."

"Uh, guys? No offense, but we have bigger problems than travel plans..." Laurel was looking out the window of the plane, noticing how the angle of the clouds and the ground below had changed. The plane appeared to be nose diving.

"Gods above, this is tedious! I won't have this plane destroyed, it could be useful. Stay here, you two. I have work to do." Loki directed yet another beam of energy at the door that had just been slammed in his face; instead of destroying it like Sara assumed he had meant to, the beam absorbed into the door without leaving a trace. Loki looked angrier and angrier by the second. "This is madness. I refuse to be outdone by a mere mortal, and one as annoying as him at that." Loki put away the tesseract and rushed the door with his shoulder, putting a sizeable dent in the steel, but not breaking through. He repeated the process a few times, only succeeding in creating a larger dent. Sara had been examining Laurel's leg chain in the meantime, Laurel hissing to her fast and furious. "Sara, seriously, I know I said fuck him, but get on his side? We both know how fucking crazy he is..."

"Shut up, I am trying to figure this out... yes, look, I know he's completely mad, but he seems to... I don't know, he really likes me. I think he wants to keep me."

"What, like a pet? Dude, so degrading."

"NO! No. More like a companion. He's more possessive about it than the average guy, but really, he seems to care. And..." Sara hesitated, picking futilely at the chain as she cast her eyes down. "I care about him. I'm sorry, I know it's so messed up.."

"Only if he hurts you. Does he?"

"...No. He won't do anything I don't want him to. He listens to me."

Laurel smiled grimly at Sara. "Well then, if he makes you happy... I say go with it. You better visit me once in awhile though, I know it'll be fun hanging around with Mr. Badass-of-the-Universe and going on adventures and all, but Pippin and I will miss you. You know how mopey that cat gets."

Sara smiled at Laurel and hugged her suddenly. "Why did I even begin to think you wouldn't understand? You've always known me better than anybody else, I bet you saw this coming."

Loki came stalking over suddenly, apparently having given up on breaking through to the cockpit. "Change of plans again. We're leaving, all three of us. Laurel might be useful to get the Doctor to give up information for her ransom."

"Holy shit, we are NOT ransoming her! I told you, taking the TARDIS is a horrible idea! Can we please just go back to London and drop Laurel off and then take off to... I don't know, where ever! You can use the tesseract to get us anywhere, right?"

"Anywhere planetside, yes. Fine, I don't want to argue with you right now, back to the flat it is. We will discuss our plans further when we get there."

A beam of tesseract energy fizzled out and cut the chain at Laurel's foot, and Sara grabbed her tight to her side. "Ok, this is going to suck, trust me, but it's the fastest way to travel."


End file.
